Xue chan AKA Little Moth AKA La Môme Xiao (2007)
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A couple purchases an eleven-year old girl who cannot walk, with the intention of using her to earn money through begging.
Trailer...Talk about box office poison, the grim, low-budget Chinese film Little Moth (playing again at 5:20 p.m. on April 29 at St. Anthony Main) turned out to be my Saturday night date with dystopia. A no-good husband and wife buy an eleven-year-old girl so she can beg for them on the streets. The little girl can’t walk, but the man won’t let his wife spend money on medicine that could treat her paralysis.
Soon, another child trafficker enters the picture, unhappy that the couple is working the same block where his one-armed boy also begs. One night, the man drinks too much and the boy escapes with the little girl on his back. The wife and shady-man-number-two take off after them, and the story only gets bleaker.
With no musical score to cue our disgust; a cast of amateur actors; and jittery, handheld camerawork, the film has a nonjudgmental, documentary-style aesthetic that isn’t quite so much detached as it is buffering. Imagine what Steven Spielberg would have done with the same story and one-hundred-times the budget. It’s not a pleasant thought.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6b4qf_la-mome-xiao
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