"Not One Less"

Zhang Yimou's modest Chinese fable uses elegant realism to examine the underside of childhood in the Information Age.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Feb 11, 2000 | Zhang Yimou's "Not One Less" offers a harshly realistic depiction of poverty in rural China, but it's also a movie with a peculiar comic dimension. It begins with a tone of gentle whimsy, as the 13-year-old heroine becomes the most ill-equipped teacher in the history of education, and ends in irony as she morphs into an accidental TV celebrity. Throughout, "Not One Less" is a tender-hearted fable about those left behind by the exploding economy of contemporary China.

This film may seem slow, and its concerns distant to many American viewers. But "Not One Less" is a movie whose humanity is irresistibly, even joyfully, accessible. In its own modest way, it's also daring. This tale of a young schoolteacher's impossible odyssey in search of a lost pupil unites technique and subject matter to create a highly compelling, sensually rooted realism that goes beyond the clichis of the "village movie." As a chronicle of childhood in desperate circumstances on the underside of the Information Age, it belongs with Walter Salles' "Central Station," and, like that film, it shares something of the quiet, mythic tragedy of Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief."

Made entirely on location without professional actors, "Not One Less" also marks a significant shift in the career of director Zhang, the leading figure -- along with his peer and rival, Chen Kaige -- in what a decade or so ago was dubbed the Chinese New Wave. Zhang is best known in this country for "Ju Dou" (nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1990) and the even better "Raise the Red Lantern," and he has long been identified as the "peasant director" for his fascination with the textures and strictures of rural life.

Most of Zhang's earlier films were intimate dramas focused on the hidden lives of women in traditional Chinese society, and all featured the remarkable actress Gong Li (who was also Zhang's significant other). With their personal and professional partnership apparently over, Zhang here strips down his passion for dusty authenticity to its most unadorned essentials. (Meanwhile, Chen has gone about as far as he can go in a completely different direction: His 1999 film, "The Emperor and the Assassin," a magnificent historical epic, was the most expensive film ever made in Asia.)

There is another female character at the center of "Not One Less," but she is nothing like Gong. Wei Minzhi is a 13-year-old girl drafted to do a grown-up's job. When the grizzled schoolteacher (Gao Enman) of the decrepit and desperately poor Shuiquan Village departs to visit his dying mother, Wei must fill in for him, teaching kids just a little younger than she is. Like everyone else in the movie, Wei's character bears her real name, but unlike the others she was cast as the result of extensive auditions. While it's impossible to know how much she is acting (or even what that means in this case), it's almost physically painful to watch her angelic countenance fill in with red splotches as she battles her natural shyness.

Facing her rambunctious students -- who abuse and manipulate her with almost anarchic glee -- Wei knows she is supposed to act like an adult, but cannot quite bear to. She tries to teach the children songs but forgets the words, almost immediately destroys the precious sticks of chalk Teacher Gao has entrusted to her and often simply imprisons the kids in the ramshackle one-room schoolhouse and hopes for the best.

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