Zhang calls new film a back-to-basics romance

BUSAN, South Korea — Veteran Chinese director Zhang Yimou unveiled his new romance to foreign audiences at Asia's leading film festival on Wednesday, calling it a simple love story that sheds the bright colors and epic scale of his recent productions.

Set against China's decade-long ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution, "Under the Hawthorn Tree" follows the relationship between a high school student sent to work in the countryside and a young geologist.

Zhang hones in on the prudishness and sexual ignorance that characterized courtships at a time when China was caught up in revolutionary fever and closed to Western influences.

Hand-holding is taboo and hugs are tentative. The female character rejects help as she crosses a creek with her love interest — relenting only to holding onto a common tree branch found lying on the ground. But their hands slide and link. A peck on the cheek sparks a squeamish look. A planned night of intimacy ends in awkward, clothed slumber.

"Indeed, there are many major commercial productions in China these days. The movies have displayed different kinds of glamor. It is unusual to suddenly make a basic, no-frills small film like this," Zhang told a news conference at South Korea's Pusan International Film Festival. The festival kicked off Wednesday with the first screening of "Under the Hawthorn Tree" outside of China.

"I was just touched by the love story of these two young people," he said. "I wanted to show the young people of today an innocent kind of love."

Zhang was a major driver behind China's deluge of historical and kung fu epics in the past decade, his contributions including the martial arts films "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers" and the imperial court drama "Curse of the Golden Flower." He also dazzled the world with his massive opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which saw hundreds of performers form Chinese characters with large blocks.

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