Product Details

• Actors:  Bingbing Fan, Dawei Tong Tony Leung Ka Fai
• Directors: Li Yu
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Surround Sound, Widescreen
• Language: Mandarin Chinese
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: New Yorker
• DVD Release Date: May 13, 2008
• Run Time: 113 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0014N005M
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #162,306 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Set against the frenzied backdrop of Beijing, where a fast growing economy has created a new class of urban socialites and nouveau riche, Lost in Beijing features four of Asian cinema's biggest stars, including Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Elaine Jin, Fan Bingbing and Tong Da Wei, who together fumble their way through a tragicomic ménage-a-quatre that left the Chinese censors blazing.

An-kun (Tong Da Wei) and his wife Ping-guo (Fan Bingbing) have built a modest living for themselves following their move to the capital from China's poorer northeast. An-kun works washing the windows of Beijing's skyscrapers while Ping-guo earns a decent wage as a masseuse at the Gold Basin Foot Massage Palace, a popular parlour owned by Dong (Tony Leung Ka-Fai), a rich middle-aged businessman who epitomizes China's new money-obsessed society.

When Ping-guo returns to the massage parlour following a liquid lunch break with one of her co-workers, Dong finds her sprawled across a couch in his office. Exploiting her drunken state, he awkwardly forces himself on her, not realizing that An-kun, atop his perch outside the office window, is a witness to what is happening. Seeing this as a moneymaking opportunity, An-kun decides to blackmail Dong either he pays or he gets brought up on charges for rape. But when Ping-guo learns that she's pregnant, the stakes get even higher.

In a brokered deal that includes An-kun, Ping-guo, Dong and Dong's wife Wang-mei (Elaine Jin), the fate of the child will join the two couples in an emotional game of tug of war, where the sides will split over money and revenge, but where love and redemption may rise above them all.

Special Features:
- Theatrical Trailer
- Dolby Digital 5.1
- Enhanced for 16x9 TVs
- Scene Selections
- Booklet: Interviews with Director Li Yu (by Grady Hendrix/The New York Sun and Artemisia Ng/Asia Pacific Arts)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars So different from other mainland films, thank gosh, August 28, 2008

By 

Phillip Royer "sitenoise" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lost in Beijing (DVD)

China's weird. Didn't we just learn from the Olympic Committee that there's billions of people living there? I think we did. Why then is this one of only two films I can think of, off the top of my head, coming from there that has any semblance of lived-life-now? Lived life now under peculiar circumstances, sure, because it is a movie after all, but still. Everything else seems to be costumed drama kung fu palace historical Mao-sanctioned fantasy crap. I'm talking mainland China here. Taiwan and Hong Kong don't count. Ang Lee doesn't count. All the Chinese filmmakers making films in other parts of the world, and getting them financed and released in other parts of the world, don't count--and there's the rub.

Lost in Beijing is banned in China and its filmmakers are banned for two years from making films in China. What kind of nonsensical time-out is that? I mean no disrespect to the Chinese, I just want more of them to fall through the cracks and make films like Lost in Beijing--which is nothing like Farewell My Hero's Kingdom of Flying Yellow Flowers.

Fan Bingbing, known in the west as Bingbing Fan, stars in this film as Liu Ping Guo (Ping Guo, the Chinese title, translates literally as "Apple"), a foot massage girl who is raped by her boss (played out-of-this-worldly great by Tony Leung Ka Fai who's been in enough movies that every Chinese citizen could pick a film of his to see without any two people seeing the same film--western audiences may know him as the guy who has sex with Marguerite Duras in The Lover), and the rape is witnessed by her husband, a window washer who just happens to be hanging from a scaffolding washing the windows of the room at the massage parlor where the rape takes place. Foot massage is big business in China so I guess that's why this massage parlor is some kind of skyscraper that needs these scaffolded window washers, but I digress. The husband sees this as an opportunity to milk a little money from the well to do parlor owner. Lost in Beijing turns a critical eye toward the new moneyed urban class set against the rural, immigrant-in-their-own-country, if you will, working class.

Bingbing's husband confronts Tony's wife with the rape news and demands money for his pain and suffering, yes, you read that right, his pain and suffering. Tony's wife laughs at him and suggests a better revenge would be for him to have sex with her, and then in a moment of barely noticed brilliance while she's riding him like a cowgirl puts sunglasses on him so she can't see him looking at her.

It turns out Bingbing is pregnant and things get a little more complicated. If you complain when a film uses overly convenient plot devices to move forward you probably won't like this film as much as I do. I'm more concerned with the caliber of the characters. All four of the main performances in Lost in Beijing are magnificent. (Tony's relationship with, and handling of, his over sized wallet/day-planner is hilarious, as is his response of randomly checking the top of his head for bald spots when he's busted for trying to use a mirror to peek at Bingbing in the shower.) The direction is good and the camerawork creative, sometimes a little too creative to the point where I got dizzy a couple times so I'm deducting a point for that. Beijing is the backdrop here, captured in all its beautiful gray and desolate self.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Characters are certainly lost, June 26, 2008

By 

Lance K. Mertz "Fantasy and Sci-Fi Reader" (Kent, Washington) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lost in Beijing (DVD)

I got the Chinese and American versions on the same DVD and watched the Chinese version even though I could not understand it, then the American, with subtitles. They are not only in different languages, but different movies. The Chinese version leaves a lot of sex out. Also, there are entire scenes that dramatically change your view of characters between the versions.

The characters are well drawn. The young husband is a much more sympathetic character in the Chinese version and the wife as well. In the American they are drawn more darkly and less likable because of the scenes included. The young mother and the Boss are great characters and show the conflicts in the changes in Chinese culture.

If you are interested in Chinese culture, cinema and the issues of fidelity and marital responsibilities this is a great film for you. I gave it a 4 because it is not the best, but it is really about a 4.5 in my book.

4.0 out of 5 stars Lost In Many Ways, May 3, 2009

By 

Martin Asiner "Adjunct College Instructor" (Jersey City, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lost in Beijing (DVD)

In LOST IN BEIJING, director Yu Li portrays a China that has lost its moral center. The focus of the plot is in Beijing, the capital. The city is more than just the physical setting. In its high rises, its scarcely hidden slums mixed with its newly rich middle class, and its deadening grayness, Beijing acts more like a Greek chorus commenting on the zigzag morality of its citizenry. The primary characters are two married couples, three of whom have serious deficiencies in matters of decency and finance. Ironically, the one who is originally pictured as the most deficient in humanity, Lin Dong (Tony Leung Ka Fai) emerges as the least tainted. Lin Dong owns a massage parlor where one of his employees a married female Liu Pingguo (Fan BingBing) gets drunk and has sex with Lin Dong. This affair starts out as consensual. She tries to change her mind but Lin Dong forces himself on her in a manner that muddles the issue of how far alcohol might mitigate a rape charge. Liu Pingguo's husband An Kun (Dawei Tong), who is a window washer, amazingly enough sees the entire act from his vantage while cleaning a window. The moral ugliness of all concerned manifests itself when all four agree to a "contract" in which Lin Dong will get custody of the expected baby. Lin Dong's wife Xiao Mei (Meihuizi Zeng) further muddies matters when she decides to seduce An Kun in revenge. Throughout all this, only Lin Dong even attempts to maintain a moral balance by satisfying his partners, a clearly impossible task, especially since only he agrees to remain bound by the contract. LOST IN BEIJING is a modern day morality tale told amidst an impersonal city that could just as easily have been any other metropolis. There are no winners here, just losers to various degrees. The subtle moral seems to be that one should act nobly enough so that a legal contract need not be needed. Life in Beijing, as apparently elsewhere, is rarely that simple.