Drifters (Chinese: 二弟) is a 2003 Chinese film directed by Wang Xiaoshuai. The film is a production of Hong Kong's Purple Light Films and People Workshop with international distribution through the Taipei-based company Arc Light Films. Drifters premiered in the 2003 Cannes Film Festival as part of the Un Certain Regard competition.[1]
Drifters follows a young slacker, Hong Yunsheng, who has become something of a local celebrity in part due to his failures as a stowaway. Recently returned to his home in Fujian after several years abroad in the U.S. as an illegal immigrant, Hong attempts to reconnect with an illegitimate son.
Hong Yunsheng is a jobless wanderer in Fujian. Attempting to find a better life in the United States, he enters the country as an undocumented worker. While there, however, his American dream quickly falls apart when he and his boss's daughter have a child. He is then told not to visit his son and is made to sign a contract saying he will not try to see him. He violates this agreement by continuing to visit his son. Enraged, Hong's boss informs the INS and has him deported back to Fujian.
Back home, Hong again takes up his old habits, wandering around the town, unemployed and listless. At the same time, he attempts to find romance with a traveling opera performer, Wu Ruifang. Eventually he hears that the child he fathered in the United States is coming to Fujian. Desiring to see the child he has never known, Hong and his boss argue until eventually Hong takes desperate measures and kidnaps the boy.
Unlike Wang's previous film, Beijing Bicycle, Drifters received mixed reviews from western critics. Derek Elley of Variety claimed that the film's "potentially involving story is too often chopped off at the knees," and also found the movie's cast to be limited by inexperience.[2] Other critics were even harsher, finding that the film used over-direction to hide a simple and "syrupy" melodrama.[3] Still others, however, were more positive. Bérénice Reynaud of Senses of Cinema found the film to be superior to the "superficial" Beijing Bicycle, and put Drifters in the growing category of "mature, disturbing, thought-provoking masterpieces inspired by globalisation."[4]
Like many of Wang's films, Drifters was screened in the Un Certain Regard competition of the 2003 Cannes Film Festival on May 20.[1][2] In addition to this, the film was screened at ten major film festivals around the world. These included:
Drifters was released on Region 1 DVD on September 15, 2005 by Film Movement. The DVD was in the original Mandarin with English subtitles. Special features included biographies of the cast and crew, and a short film, Robot Boy by Ted Passon.[10] The disc's aspect ratio was 1.78:1 in letterbox format.
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