A Touch of Sin – 7.5

A searing portrait of contemporary Chinese society, not always comprehensible to a Westerner, although violence is a fairly universal language. The separate stories are marginally related, enough that you feel it is one society you are seeing; and the protagonists are similarly social misfits or outcasts, who all, in different ways, want a better life for themselves. You can calibrate the degree of justification behind the murders or suicide they commit, but more interesting, in a way, is the wall of mass conformity they each stand out from. Whether intentional or not, the indictment of China as a harsh and soulless place, not to mention corrupt and immoral, is devastating.