UNIFORMLY GOOD. As raw and gritty as the digital video on which it is
shot, Yinan Diao’s Uniform vividly shows that it doesn’t take a
Hollywood-size budget to make an artful, moving, and emotionally evocative
film. (Photos courtesy of First Run Features)
From The Asian Reporter, V17, #29 (July 17, 2007), page 15.
A modern fable dressed in simple clothing

Uniform
Directed by Yinan Diao
Produced by Hu Tong Communication Productions, Iku
Ishikawa, and Li Kit Ming
Distributed by First Run Features, 2006
DVD, 92 minutes, $24.95
By Mike Street
Special to The Asian Reporter
Modern China is at a crossroads between communism and capitalism, its
citizens torn between the universal good touted by their government and the
self-advancement that lies at the heart of Western economics. Yinan Diao’s
subtle, understated film Uniform offers a metaphorical portrait of
this struggle, exposing the human nature common to us all, in the East or
West. For all who think that Chinese cinema must bear the ideological
imprimatur of its repressive government, or believe that great results
cannot be achieved with low budgets, Uniform will wonderfully prove
them wrong.
Wang Xiojan (Liang Hongli) is a humble tailor struggling to support his
mother and ailing father, who cannot work his job at the nearby enamel
factory. They live with their heads barely above poverty, and Wang’s income
from laundry and alterations can’t sustain them all when the factory closes
and his father loses his benefits.
Good fortune seems to offer him a way out when a policeman drops his
uniform off, then gets injured and doesn’t come to claim his shirt. Caught
in a downpour while trying to deliver the shirt to its rightful owner, Wang
dons the uniform and soon realizes the power it confers.
The uniform not only allows Wang to project the confidence he needs to
ask out Zheng Shasha (Zeng Xueqiong), a pretty video clerk, it also enables
him to shake down unsuspecting motorists for lucrative bribes. But the
economic drain of having a girlfriend and paying his father’s hospital bills
turns his casual playacting into a serious occupation, and we know Wang’s
ruse is bound to catch up with him sooner than later. When the real police
question him about labor unrest, and Zheng becomes more distant, Wang begins
to use the uniform for the power it brings him as much as the extra income.
As his secret begins to leak out, he finds that Zheng has a double identity
of her own, and their romance is quickly threatened by the playacting
required by life in contemporary China — if not everywhere.
Just like his characters, director Yinan Diao does a great deal with few
luxuries, shooting the film in digital video and on location in rundown
Chinese slums. But the low-rent medium perfectly fits his message, and he
achieves wonderfully subtle effects, framing scenes like a master filmmaker
and creating the perfect dismal atmosphere for his urban fable. The story he
tells is a universal one, about the difference between our inner selves and
that which we project to others. Simply donning a policeman’s uniform
shouldn’t change who Wang is, but it affects the perception of him by
others, which in turn affects his own self-image. He is caught in a
conundrum between who he is and who he seems to be, a struggle which we all
face, yet which the director represents easily with a formal scrap of blue
cloth.
Although the performances of newcomers Zeng and Liang are understated and
muted, this is true to their characters, the story, and Chinese society as a
whole. When Wang is berated and beaten during a police interrogation, he
barely flinches, and the most agonizingly emotional scenes between the two
lovers are likewise barely evident on their stoic faces. Even the film’s
uncertain ending is a kind of emotional restraint, the most wrenching of
conflicts still unresolved — or if they are dealt with, then understood only
by implication.
As raw and gritty as the digital video on which it is shot, Uniform
vividly shows that it doesn’t take a Hollywood-size budget to make an
artful, moving, and emotionally evocative film. Those wishing for a film
crammed with witty dialogue, fast-paced action scenes, or glittering special
effects may find themselves bored, but anyone looking for a beautiful and
deceptively simple fable of life in the modern world will be moved, and the
images and lessons of Uniform will not leave them for some time.
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