Beijing Escorts: China unveils rare star power of Oscar entry
BEIJING (Reuters) – Zhang Yimou, one of China’s best-known directors, is banking on heartthrob Christian Bale to help boost the country’s chances of winning an Oscar, with his latest film on a tragic chapter in the nation’s history.
“The Flowers of War,” China’s Academy Award entry for best foreign language film, centres around a mortician (Bale) who gets caught up in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and has to save a group of school girls from the clutches of the Japanese.
On the way he becomes involved with a high-class Chinese courtesan, finding both love and personal redemption.
The film, which hits Chinese screens on Friday followed a week later by a limited release in the United States, holds little back in its graphic depiction of the events of more than eight decades ago, a story everyone in China knows well.
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Sino-Japanese ties have been overshadowed for years by what Beijing says has been Tokyo’s refusal to admit to atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in the country between 1931 and 1945.
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