Air Cuts, The

In Mandarin. Shot against the landscape of social and economic changes in Beijing – the destruction of aged houses and the construction of new pillars of skyscrapers – the film collects a string of small events which show human behaviour and its interaction with the surrounding environment that is diffused with an irritating air of crawling anxiety and sexuality. While the events are mostly unrealistic and often unrelated, at the centre of theme is a middle-class couple who are going through an uncomfortable relationship. They wonder if the quality of their relationship is due to the mal-positioning of their bed, or the uncooperative bed itself. After discussing with his wife the failed love-making of the night before and the long time disorder of her period, Lee Haun, the husband and former obstetrician, wanders into different scenes aimlessly. At the same time, Lin Chian, the wife, full of uncomfortable energy and suppressed anxiety, attempts to understand herself by standing high up on a construction scaffolding, where the value of her existence is recognized by the peering eyes of two old men. Drawn by its powerful and possessing rumbling, Lin Chian catches up with a bulldozer and rushes to an orgiastic excitement followed by an unbearable hollowness of her body. Responding to a desperate call from an abandoned broken telephone, the couple team up and take off in a military jeep, rushing to rescue a lying-in woman and her unborn baby. Eyes blindfolded as required by law, the couple steer their jeep into a highway to meet an unborn life, who is waiting and eager to join humanity.