What you are now reading should have been an interview with Li Ruijun. The acclaimed Chinese director has a fine new film being released in the UK, Return to Dust, a stark and tender love story between a peasant couple in Gansu province, near the Mongolian border. The Financial Times had long planned to talk to Li about it. Instead, it is left to Eve Gabereau of UK distributor Modern Films to fill the space left by Li and his producers. “They’re not speaking,” she says. “But they aren’t saying why not, either.”
This much is a pity. There is a lot to discuss. The quality of the movie aside, a conversation would explore how a low-budget art-house film became a deeply unlikely commercial smash, topping the Chinese box office ahead of various blockbusters. But then there would also be the equally strange, far sadder tale of how it vanished from cinemas. Seemingly banned merely for spotlighting the hard lives of the rural poor, the sleeper hit appears a snapshot of an airless political climate — and a symbol of the vulnerability of art.
You could start both stories this February, with a premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Li, 39, had already made a name in art-house circles with five previous films, but Return to Dust suggested a breakthrough. Shot in his home county of Gaotai, it starred highly regarded actress Hai Qing as a disabled, middle-aged spinster. The rest of the cast were non-professionals, including Wu Renlin as the sturdy farmer wed to her in a marriage arranged by their families. With lyrical realism giving life to the growing bond between the pair, critics were impressed.