Review from David D'Arcy

2008-07-12 02:25:52

Little Moth, from China, was another revelation, and not just because it cost all of $20,000 to make. Its heartbreakingly poignant story, performed deadpan by a non-professional cast, was adapted by the director from a novel by Tianguang Bai. It's not a vision of China that the Beijing government is likely to want foreigners to see just before the Olympics. Yet it couldn't be more realistic, or more convincingly filmed.

The film's title comes from Xiao'e, the name of an expressionless girl of 11 (played by Huihui Zhao) who can't walk. She is bought through a petty hustler who knows her drunken father by Luo and Guiha, a couple who beg on the street. The professional pandhandlers figure that adding a sick "daughter" to their team, on the curb with her "mother," will add to the take. A doctor tells the "parents" that the girl has a serious disease and is in dire need of treatment. They claim not to have money, so he gives them some herbal medicine and a prescription that can be filled if they ever want to pay for it.

Soon money complicates things. Yes, even panhandlers can run short of cash, or fear that they might. Luo is so cheap that he won't allow Guiha to prepare the girl's medicine, but Guiha's motherly instincts win out. Local thugs then demand their cut from the street begging, and another con-man, Yang, who has a one-armed boy of 13 begging for him, joins the picture. Eventually Xiao'e and the young boy who befriends her flee - see the film to find out how - and they find that life on the streets for sick and disabled children is as grim as it looks. "Child beggars get restless when they reach the age of 13," Yang explains knowingly, as he heads to an orphanage to find a new boy.

Little Moth, shot in dusty grey street locations that are typical of the outskirts of any Chinese city these days, has an austerity which fits the story, but never seems to be cutting corners to save money. The tale has a deliberate rhythm, and cinematography by Yi Huang tracks the young girl's journey with a remarkable subtlety. Peng Tao's script is not an indictment of his government for letting such a girl fall into slavery - officials are absent from this film - yet his spare storytelling ensures that you understand why she is where she is. I won't give away the ending, except to note that the sick young girl eventually becomes too expensive for anyone to care for her.

There is something of a neo-realist look to Little Moth, thanks in part to the polluted atmosphere of its locations that mutes its colors into a monochrome. As in the neo-realist dramas, we know why these people are poor, so Peng Tao has no reason to be didactic. Think of the poverty of Naples in the late 1940s, but without the spectacle and the outbursts of emotion. The fatalism here, internalized by every character on the screen, hums along like a small efficient engine.

Director Peng Tao was in Trenčianske Teplice with his producer, Wenwen Zeng, a former corporate lawyer who is now his collaborator. The producer pointed out that, even though the actors in the principle roles were non-professionals, the doctors on screen lamenting the severity of Xiao'e's untreated illness were real doctors, who seemed to have seen it all before. "They know their profession," she said.