Xi Xi

Xi Xi is going to get engaged in Paris before leaving to marry and live in China. Beyond traditions, propriety, family assent and the game of social representation, what place is left for the young promise when everything seems to be decided without her ?

Xu Xiao Tong, who’s herself sinophone, filmed her bestfriend with a huge familiarity and an evident intimacy all along the preparations of her engagement. Always putting herself as just an observer, but never denying her complicity with those who are filmed, the director frustrates the pitfall of the cliché and the temptation of the exoticism. In front of her camera, everyone is free to be who he is, to unveil his truth without any filter. It produces the image of a generation born with both cultures, a generation who doubts, seeks her place, between self-assertion and respect with no conviction of the elders’ tradition.