Ray Pride

"Quitting," Zhang Yang's third feature (following "Shower"), is bold, impassioned and vivid in its portrayal of a damaged life brought back to health. It tempts greatness. Jia Hongsheng is a popular Chinese actor who appeared in the mesmerizing "Suzhou River." But he disappeared for a few years, creating all manner of urban legend in China: dead, derelict, strung-out? Drugs were the true story. Four years of this 34-year-old actor's life were spent maintaining. He quit acting; he quit trying. "Quitting" starts as a slacker story. Jia won't leave his room in the Beijing apartment he shares with his sister. His parents, who work in a regional theater in the provinces, come to the city to see if they can help this wayward son, sitting in the dark watching "Taxi Driver" repeatedly, fixating on John Lennon, imagining he's Lennon's son. Jia becomes an actor who no longer has a self; an addict who functions only when smoking heroin; a relative who relates only through conflict. Again, the material is suggestive, seeming to question whether we are all only empty vessels for the dreams of others, the expectations of our family, the needs of society. Hearing voices, punishing himself, Jia seems by mid-film a schizophrenic brimming with Western influences. Zhang's ultimate triumph is in depicting how cycles can be broken by an individual working in concert with others. The seamless performances are more astonishing upon discovery that Zhang uses non-actors to play themselves, from Jia's parents to the inmates of a mental institution. Zhang's accomplishment is akin to that of virtuosos in the contemporary Iranian mode, such as Makmahlbaf and Kiarostami, taking empathy to a superb, wrenching level of intensity while remaining eminently accessible.

"Quitting" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2002-11-13)

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