Jessica Kiang A later-life love story of the gentlest kind, Li Ruijun’s “Return to Dust” is an absorbing, beautifully framed drama that makes a virtue — possibly too much a virtue — of simplicity.
The story is straightforward: Two lonely middle-aged people, each barely tolerated by their more worldly family members, are pushed into an arranged marriage, which quietly blossoms into a companionable love match.
The lead characters are simple, or are believed to be by their scornful neighbors, as they pursue a punishingly traditional farming lifestyle with only a long-suffering donkey to lighten the backbreaking load.
Crops grow, seasons turn and anything too biting or topical or politically charged, the film simply avoids. Li’s sixth feature unfolds in a small village in Gaotai (the director’s home region), which is being whittled away as its inhabitants move to the cities for work.
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