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- Movie: Quitting
- Chinese: 昨天 (Zuotian)
- Director: Zhang Yang
- Writer: Xin Huo, Zhang Yang
- Producer:
- Cinematographer:
- Release Date: September 4, 1991
- Runtime: 114 min.
- Language: Mandarin
- Country: China
Plot
Quitting concerns a troubled soul and how the massive changes wrought in contemporary urban China can batter a man. But the protagonist is not a hapless naif, fearing and defeated by change. Both the star of the film and the person on which it is based is Jia Hong-Sheng, one of China’s most visible young stars, whose performances in Suzhou River and Frozen practically define the bursting exuberance of young Chinese cinema. Both historical biography and documentary re-enactment, Quitting defies easy categorization, with the real protagonists of Jia’s hellish life journey playing themselves in almost every case. The film’s first half witnesses Jia led gradually into a state of despair by his naturally fragile psychological state and his experimentation with drugs. He stops acting and cuts himself off entirely from all his friends, locks himself in an apartment and listens to tapes of his favourite music over and over again. Jia’s parents are members of a small theatre troupe in a town in Northeast China. Overjoyed by their son’s success but distraught by his addiction, they travel to Beijing to be with him, comically bringing their entire apartment with them. As they try to reach out to him, moments of great delicacy and doom build to a minor tragedy, initiating the film’s second half, Jia’s redemption in a brutal mental institution.
Cast
