Night Train

Running time: 95 mins

In China's X'ian province, the earth is hard; the landscape, bare: factories, mountains, rocks, rivers and snow.

Austerity is the order of the day; solitude, the norm; life, a slow pace. Perfectly mirroring the landscape and its sleepwalking inhabitants, Night Train is the tale of a desperate and withdrawn woman, simultaneously buffered and distanced from people around her, from her work, from her life- yet reaching out for human contact. In an amazing achievement, director Diao Yi Nan (screenwriter: Spicy Love Soup, Shower, and Uniform evokes Antonioni at his best in his depiction of people in a landscape, and Bresson at his most profound in his portrayal of their quest for redemption. Told in oblique strokes, with a luminous performance by actress Dan Liu, stunning camera composition and a perfect sense of timing, Night Train quietly but inevitably builds towards a climax of such truly startling intensity its echoes will haunt you.

--Charlie Cockey