A Soaring Look At Life In China

The Rectification Movement, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution - to Westerners, modern Chinese history reads like a collection of grandiose labels.

But Tietou, a Beijing child who experiences these events in "The Blue Kite," knows nothing of politics or history. All he knows is, he keeps changing fathers.

A remarkably intimate and candid portrait of everyday urban life in China, ''The Blue Kite" is a stinging indictment of a revolution that inflicted so much misery on ordinary people to so little end. But this is not a cold political tract; what makes "The Blue Kite" soar are its honest family relationships - particularly the loving mother and mischievous son who are the core of the film.

The action unfolds in the form of memoirs by an unseen, adult Tietou, whose narration bridges the film's three sections - one for each of his three film fathers.

Even before his birth, political events shape his life: His mother, schoolteacher Chen Shujuan (Lu Liping), and his father, library worker Lin Shaolong (Pu Quanxin), are forced to postpone their wedding because of the death of Josef Stalin.

Later, Lin becomes an innocent victim of the backlash to the Rectification Movement, during which the Communist Party invited citizens to voice criticisms. Chen subsequently marries a sickly co-worker of her husband's (Li Xuejian) and a high-level party official (Guo Baochang) who loses everything during the Cultural Revolution.

During the 15 years spanned by the film, we learn the equally depressing stories of Tietou's aunts, uncles and neighbors in the small Beijing courtyard where he grows up. One of his mother's brothers, a pilot with the People's Liberation Army (Zhong Ping), is losing his eyesight; his fiancee (Zhang Hong), a performer with an army theater troupe, loses her position when she balks at dancing with senior officers - and the implied presumption that she would have to grant them sexual favors, as well.

Another brother who also is punished for alleged subversion (Chu Quanzhong) winds up in a loveless marriage because the woman he loves is of the wrong class. Even Chen's older sister (Song Xiaoying), a loyal party member who lost her husband in battle during the Long March, suffers when the Cultural Revolution topples the establishment.