Synopsis
A struggling, recently unemployed young factory worker returns to his family's laundrette, where he 'borrows' a police officer's shirt and begins successfully impersonating an officer of the law.
Uniform
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Releases by Date
Theatrical
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USA
30 Sep 2003
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Canada
24 Aug 2004
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UK
Releases by Country
Canada
30 Sep 2003
- Theatrical
UK
24 Aug 2004
- Theatrical
USA
10 Apr 2003
- Theatrical
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I love Diao Yinan to death, but this is a very underwhelming debut. Compared to his more mature outputs, this is just safe, unfocused, and features a painfully unamusing protagonist.
Depicting individuals surviving in a society with a sharp economic slump and social injustice, Uniform is as realistic as it gets, with the focus on a young tailor who puts on a new identity after gaining a police uniform. I enjoyed how it shows a maniac world caught between two eras with brutal honesty and a sense of humor, but it also feels too raw and too undecided to be taken seriously. Night Train on the other hand has a similar theme but the execution is way superior, and I call it personal growth.
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Tunnel of Memories. I saw the river, the realization of cynicism. Through a perception of everyday identity; the drama of noir. Though Diao Yi'nan should give complexity to the female characters he writes for a message to feel less superficial.
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Uniform is the feature film debut of Diao Yi'nan, who previously worked as a screenwriter (for the likes of Zhang Yang ("Shower") and Shi Runjiu) and also as an actor (Yu Lik-wai's "All Tomorrow's Parties"). The film follows a young man named Wang Xiaojian, who, down on his luck, comes upon an abandoned policeman's uniform. Upon wearing it, Wang discovers that he can have influence and control not only on others but himself as well.
This low-budget film was was filmed primarily in Diao's home province of Shaanxi. It is handsomely lensed on digital video. Diao is clearly familiar with the work of many of his colleagues. The great Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke served as an artistic adviser on this…
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Rural China — depressing, bleak and harsh as ever. Beautifully minimalist with its low-budget realism. Shines with its simplicity but highly compelling exploring the themes of power, authority and identity. Would have been even better if the woman character had more depth which would have added more weight to the central dynamics. Also the ending is little abrupt though not hard to imagine what could possibly happen from there. Despite the cheap digital photography, Yi'nan's visual prowess shows and he already had great eye for compositions. So overall yes pretty pretty good stuff and it seems like Diao really peaked on his debut.. I don't know what he's up to these days but he could consider going back to his roots..
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From the very start Diao Yi’nan could never avoid the fatal affairs of noir. Darkened tunnels, dual personas and the depressive puff of the cigarette, identities criss-crossing like a series of twists plunging deep into the desperate underbelly of a people forgotten. Diao favours the sun as filtered through the harsh honesty of cheap digital, pursuing a culture so lost in its own lies than not even a mirror running through the streets can expose its many faces, the costumes so prevalent that each tragedy arrives dressed as an opportunity. Except here Diao's smoking gun is a police uniform, and its powers lies in a country told to never question its presence.
Moderate power corrupts moderately as Wang's chance encounter…
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There are few other contemporary Chinese directors who I respect more than Diao Yi'nan. His films BLACK COAL, THIN ICE and THE WILD GOOSE LAKE are amongst my favourite films of all time, so I thought I’d check out his debut from 2003.
I love seeing how really talented accomplished directors started out. This is such a simple story but with incredibly weighty themes around identity and the destructive force of authority and power. What makes this clearly a Diao Yi’nan film though is the stunning shot compositions. Every scene is stunning, even with such a meagre budget.
My only real gripe is that the central relationship between Wang & Zheng would be 100% more effective if her character was written…
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Un jeune homme désoeuvré revêt un habit de policier emprunté à la buanderette de sa mère et voit une panoplie de magouilles et de possibilités s'ouvrir à lui (dont celles du coeur). Diao opère dans l'ombre de Jia (qui agit ici à titre de conseiller), mais on reconnaît déjà le désir d'adapter les codes du noir à la Chine contemporaine, dans un film finalement très cinéphile (les scènes de club vidéo, les petites références à Travis Bickle, ou encore le dispositif plutôt bressonien, très simple, de l'ensemble). Et bien que le film soit sur un mode plus réaliste, Dong Jingsong (qui tournera WILD GOOSE LAKE et LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT) fait des petites merveilles en DV, dont une belle séquence caméra-épaule impliquant un miroir et des scènes de nuit, en clair-obscurs glauques et bruyants, joliment texturées.
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Diao Yinan's first feature. I'm catching up on Diao's relatively short filmography after being impressed by his visual sensibilities in Black Coal, Thin Ice a few years back.
Uniform showcases his eye for composition, but I admit being distracted by its lo-fi digital photography, which looks great in low-light scenes but comes through garish and hyper-real in the daytime shots that predominate the film. It often had the 'eyefeel' of a soap opera, which felt at odds with the quiet realism of the story.
The story does work, however, as poor factory worker Wang Xiaojian finds himself in possession of a lost police uniform and suddenly finds himself commanding both deference and bribes. Liang Hongli plays Wang with quiet resentment,…
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Proving again that ACAB even fake ones.
There’s a vague metaphor about how a withering social safety net (in the huge healthcare bill and shredding of textile workers rights) can lead the working poor to step on each other’s heads, seeing it as the only way up in a society moving closer to free for all capitalism. See: Wang’s Stanford prison experiment levels of willful abuse he hands out once dressed in the robes of power. Idk how well it holds together or resolved itself I suppose tho.
Then there’s Zheng Shasha, set up as a mirror to Wang, another person leading a double life. But idk, the sex work arc is handled pretty superficially and we’re never given any…
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There's nothing in here about power or the performance of such that rises above cliche (though I do like how resolutely small it is, with the main character wielding his newfound faux-status as a traffic cop with mild shittiness that befits his small beans position), but Diao Yi’nan gets a lot of mileage out of the DV aesthetic - there's a constant push and pull between the realism that the camera's low resolution suggests and the expressionism that all the stylised lighting and striking framing do, like the battle between the clear performative bullshit of these class distinctions and the concrete realities that they do entail.
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A simple uniform symbolizes the destructive forces of authority and power. A modest tour de force made on a modest budget.
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I've seen the three films by Diao Yi'nan in inverse chronological order and I must say that I like him more and more. A very promising director from China. Uniform, despite its clear and simple plot, approaches the problem of power and repression in a quite complex way.