(re)Search my Trash

<body> <div align="left"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="800" cellpadding="0" height="100%"> <tr> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/square.gif" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="592" height="1%" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/squareright.gif" valign="top">  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="99%">    <p>On the run from the law, a prostitute (Ruan Ling-Yu) hides in the hideout of "the boss" (Zhang Zhizhi), a small-frye gambler with big ambitions and a bigger mouth, and in return, he demands a night with her. Having little choice, she agrees. The next day already, he moves in with her and makes himself her pimp.<p>The woman in question though is more than just a prostitute, she only sells her body to feed her baby son and offer him the life she never had. Eventually, she grows tired of the boss and runs away, but to no avail, she finds her and threatens to sell her son should she ever try again. He also makes her change her plans of starting an honest life, simply because she makes more money (for him) as a streetwalker. However, the woman puts aside a little money each day, to one day afford her son a better education than she ever had.<p>Years have passed, and the situation of the woman hasn't improved, but at least she has saved enough money to pay the tuition of her son's school. <p>Years later: The boy's doing very good at school, enjoys it, too, but there are those parents who are not happy about what his mother does ... and ultimately complain to the principal. The principal pays our heroine a visit with the intention of having the boy expelled should he find out his mother's a prostitute. She admits to everything, but once the principal learns that she only does what she does to afford her son a better future, he promise to keep him in school at any cost ... and then he fails, because the school board decides against him and for expulsion. The principal decides to quit his job rather than move on as if nothing had happened.<p>Her son's expulsion leaves our heroine shattered and she decides to skip town with him for good - when she finds all the money she hid from the boss for the boy's commission gone. Obviously, "the boss" has stolen it, to which he freely admits when she faces him, and he also admits he has already lost it all, with a smirk - upon which she smashes a bottle over his head, which effectively kills him. She is arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison - but the principal comes to visit her and tells her he has personally adopted her son so he could have the life she always so wanted him to have ...<p> <p>A very touching silent drama that manages to get its emotional impact across not by riding on big emotions and clichés but by telling its story about social outcasts in a very sympathetic way and with enough subtlety for the viewer to find one's own emotional link to the characters. And add to this a very evocative (but by no means ham) performance by Ruan Ling-Yu - and hey, you've got yourself a pretty powerful movie!<p>  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="1%">  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> currentyear = "2013"; </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT language="JavaScript" src="../scripts/endcredits.js"></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> dosworsdonn(); </SCRIPT> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body>