Synopsis
Pickpocket (Xiao Wu, 1997) is Jia Zhangke's debut feature, a quiet drama you can watch online on iFILM. In a dusty provincial Chinese town, a petty thief nicknamed Xiao Wu keeps lifting wallets while the friends he grew up with quietly trade crime for respectable business.
Wang Hongwei plays the man left behind. An old partner throws a wedding and invites half the street, then drops Xiao Wu from the guest list because a thief is bad for the image. A brief romance with a karaoke-bar hostess is the first thing that makes him picture a future at all. Around him the old neighborhood is being torn down block by block, and he stands in the rubble like someone forgot to write him out.
Shot almost like a documentary on the real streets of Fenyang, the film announced China's so-called Sixth Generation and turned Jia Zhangke into one of his era's defining directors. No score, no melodrama, just a small man watching his world move on without him. One for patient viewers who love slow cinema. Stream Pickpocket (1997) online on iFILM.
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