China ‘87, the others

Freed from time and any historical or political perspective, we are confronted with the Otherness of Chinese culture. We see in this film the opposite of the picturesque – a slice of quotidian life that may be banal, but fascinates us all the same. Is this a kind of exoticism? Yes, if exoticism means to recognize Otherness, to realize that you are the others’ Other and so you are every bit as ‘exotic’ as they are.