Walking Past the Future

"Yang handles the role capably, without a single exaggerated note. Yet, for all the misfortunes Yaoting goes through, her character does not have great complexity." 

"An earnest but somewhat insubstantial (...) Yang’s performance is certainly bold and effective (...) [It] is perhaps a bit too pedestrian to really fire the viewer up about the discontents of China’s disfranchised working class." 

"The film is calmly, even-handedly relentless in illustrating the myriad routine ways in which Yaoting and her fun-loving girlish dorm mates are at the beck and call of an economic system in which their only function is to make money or spend money." 

"[It] is clearly rooted in contemporary socio-economic realities, but uneven dramatic treatment makes for a less than entirely cogent modern tragedy"