Dir: Li Yu. Chi-Fr. 1995.93mins.

A persuasive, lyricalstudy of smalltown life in rural China in the 1980s and 1990s, Dam Street fullyconfirms the promise of director Li Yu's debut feature, Fish And Elephant.Like that first film, Dam Street deals with women's issues - but not ina narrow or dogmatic way. There is something of Douglas Sirk in the way Li Yumanages to combine women's melodrama with the close study of a time and place,and the way in which a central relationship - in this case between a "fallen"woman and a 10-year-old boy who she later discovers is her son - makes up forall the small-mindedness and social hypocrisy that surrounds it.

The limpid, painterlyphotography, full of symbolic colour-coding, makes the film look lusher thanits limited budget would suggest. Dam Street's double-whammy festivallaunch at Venice and Toronto should be the prelude to more festival action andeventual arthouse distribution in selected territories.

Traditional Chinese operasinger Liu Yu makes a convincing debut here as Yun, a bright, romantic girlliving in a small town in rural Sichuan province. A river running through thetown - over the dam (in fact it's more of a weir) of the title - underpins thefilm's frequent recourse to water symbolism, which also branches out intopiscine images: we see fish speared, hooked, scaled and gutted while stillalive, and in one memorable scene, flapping all over the road, having spilledfrom an overturned handcart.

We are free to link the fishwith the treatment meted out to Yun, another beautiful, ungraspable, abusedobject - but the symbolism is left for us to dip into, never imposed.

When 16-year-old Yundiscovers she is pregnant, her world falls apart. She is expelled from school,publicly denounced for "moral decadence", and told, after the birth, that herbaby is dead; in fact it was given up for adoption.

A long full-screen captionfills us in on this fact, and we fast forward 10 years to the point when Yun,now a trained classical Chinese opera singer, returns to her hometown with hertroupe.

Before, civic entertainmenthad consisted mainly of long, staged harangues by Chinese veterans of the warin Vietnam, but now even traditional opera is considered too old school: Yun isheckled and told to get her clothes off, and sing some pop songs. (There'sanother nice dig at changing mores when we see Yun sticking a poster of Gong Liup in her dressing room).

Mischievous 10-year old Yongsneaks into a performance and, infatuated, is soon visiting Yun in her dressingroom. The relationship between the two develops as Yun discovers the joys ofhanging out with a kid who makes no demands on her, and allows her to resumeher interrupted girlhood. Yong is also the only one to defend her when the wifeand family of a man she's having an affair with attack her in public.

The fact that Yong is reallyher son is signalled for the audience right from the start; but Yun onlycottons onto this slowly, and rather than generating a pat happy ending, therealisation gives rise to a melancholy finale which is neverthelessfinely-judged in terms of character and mood.

The acting is uniformlyexcellent; in addition to the two leads, Li Kechun, who plays Yun'sschoolteacher mother, stands out for her role as a woman confused by modernityand torn between the pressure to conform and maternal love.

Dam Street is a measured drama replete with human warmth andsadness, and marks the maturity of an auteur who looks set to rival Li Shaohong(Baober In Love) for the title of mainland China's most significantfemale director.

Production companies
Laurel Films
Rosem Films
Fonds Sud Cinema

International sales
Bavaria Film International

Executive producer
Fang Li

Co-producer
Sylvain Bursztejn

Screenplay
Li Yu
Fang Li

Cinematography
Wang Wei

Editor
Karl Riedl

Production design
Cai Weidong

Music
Liu Sijun

Main cast
Liu Yi
Huang Xingrao
Li Kechun
Wang Yizhu