Tuya's Marriage (2006)

Tuya's Marriage (dir. Wang Quan'an) is a visually striking film set in the mongolian countryside. Don't be fooled to think that the film is an expression of totalitarian pomp because it is a Chinese production. Tuya's husband is injured. Tuya is a shephered and right from the start, we are given the impression that she is tough. After hurting her back in an accident, Tuya makes a decision: she has to find a new husband who can take care of her, the other husband and their children. The rest of the film depict Tuya's suitors - there are plenty of them. Don't expect a romantic comedy. Be prepared for an ethnographic exploration of a milieu - hard labor, the steppe, gender roles, quietly absurd scenes. The virtue of Tuya's marriage is that it makes no attempt to make the mongolian countryside look exotic. A few times, I thought that the film could just as well have taken place on my parents' island. The film's beauty is not of the grandiose kind. The film, instead, captures the beauty of everyday life, without sentimentalizing the barren steppe. I was also happy to see that Tuya's loyalty to her husband is not depicted as the loyalty of a Woman; she is just a human being who won't let her friend wither away in some anonymous place. Tuya is not reduced into the gloriously laborious Strong Woman. She might be brave, but she is also angry, sad, bitter. 

Khadak (2006)

Khadak boasts several nice scenes. It shows beautiful/horrifying pictures of the Mongolian steppe, run-down post-Soviet industry and small towns. Beyond these few scenes, Khadak is a mess consisting of heavy symbolism, overblown gestures and a muddled plot. Some things can be said for it: even though it attempts to portray a state of alienation, it doesn't rely on a romantic view of the rural life. What we see of life in and around the yortha, it is a life of hardships. The main characters' (he is a sheepherder) relationship to nature is visualized in a satisfactory way. For all these beautiful images, Khaled remains an insubstantial film. It uses too many clichés of art house cinema, such as forced repetition and details that are loaded with symbolism of which the viewer (at least not this one) has a very fuzzy grasp.