Jinglei Xu	...	(Director)
Jinglei Xu	...	(Writer)
Jinglei Xu	...	Jing
Daying Ye	...	Jing's Father
Wen Jiang	...
Qiu Qiu	...
Xiaoming Su	...
Yuan Zhang	...
Lu Gan	...	Cinematographer

Comments: Xu Jinglei is a talented actor, writer, and director (and gorgeous), all of which she performs here. This is her directorial debut, produced while still in her twenties. It shows lots of promise. The characters are engaging, the direction mostly assured (up to a point), and while the story arc is worthwhile overall, the script used in bringing it to fruition comes up a little short in the third act. The first two acts setting up the characters and relationships are wonderful but when it comes time for the drama to enter and make something of the relationships, things start to meander and too much is stirred in too quickly to create a satisfying conclusion. A little restraint, leaving the film as a slice of life rather than a big meaningful drama would have been better.

Summary: Xiao Yu, a Beijing teenager, is abruptly left without a mother following a traffic accident. Her father, Lao Yu, with whom she has had little contact, becomes her legal guardian. He is unsure how to act in this role, but as time progresses their relationship matures into an affectionate one.

Lao Yu is not the most dependable of men, however. He gambles, engages in small-time black market business transactions, and spends a great deal of time at a bar associating with other men who live similar lives. This culminates finally in his arrest, and he spends some time in prison. In his absence, Xiao Yu graduates from high school and begins her university studies, and begins living with her boyfriend, a hot-tempered student from Hunan. When her father is released, he finds his relationship with his daughter strained, due in no small part to her frustrations over his absence and lack of dependability, along with his fatherly concerns about her living arrangement.

She and her boyfriend leave Beijing for Shanghai, where she becomes pregnant. When her relationship with her boyfriend does not work out, she returns to Beijing to live with her father, who sees her through her pregnancy and helps her raise her child. He has not entirely mended his ways, however, and frequently sneaks out at night to gamble. On one such occasion his friends decide to play a prank, and barge in on the game pretending to be the police—the stress of the experience causes Lao Yu to suffer a stroke ….