Ray Pride

(Tuya de hun shi) The debut release from Chicago's newest distribution label, Music Box Films, "Tuya's Marriage" is a brightly colored, genial story of culture clash in the form of a not-quite-ethnographic romantic comedy. Winner of Best Actress at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Golden Bear at Berlin 2007, and directed by Wang Quanan, "Tuya's Marriage" stars Yu Nan, a regular in Wang's films. Also on board is his German cinematographer, Lutz Reitemeier, whose images are glorious without becoming mere pageantry. Tuya is a shepherd in the Mongolian desert who refuses to be relocated with her 100 sheep, a disabled husband and two children. But she can do this only if she pretends to divorce her husband while taking on a new, moneyed mate to take care of the entire flock. Suitors ensue. "Tuya's Marriage" is everything you wouldn't expect, neither allegory nor polemic, just a straightforward (but layered) entertainment: warm, funny, gorgeous, affirmative and a critique of the death of isolation in the new century. 86m.
"Tuya's Marriage" opens Friday at Music Box.


(2008-04-22)

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