Personal Tailor (2013)

Directed by: Xiaogang Feng
Country: China

Movie Review: Abandoning for now commercial big productions (“Aftershock”, “Back to 1942”), Chinese helmer Xiaogang Feng embarks in a modest, yet witty comedy that makes diverse social-political considerations about the actual Chinese regime, its big leaders, art and artists, wealthy aristocrats, and environmental issues. Written by Shuo Wang, who already had collaborated with Feng in “If You Are the One 2”, the story is centered in a company called ‘Personal Tailor’, dedicated to selling impossible dreams to their eccentric clients. Presented with farcical tones and counting with poignant, half-true-half-parody jokes, the episodic adventures start hilariously when the company enacts the capture and torture of a woman by the Nazi regime, moving afterwards to an incorruptible chauffer who eagerly whishes to be one of the big leaders of China (what a great laugh he puts!), but occasionally suffering crisis every time he becomes aware of reality. We can also follow a tasteless filmmaker struggling to create something art-house but eventually becoming victim of high-culture shock, and a money-fanatic woman whose bigger pleasure consists in pay exorbitant prices for whatever. This satire ends with a nostalgic touch, apologizing to nature and everyone else for the damages done in our planet. “Personal Tailor” exhibits a few good thoughts within the addressed topics, biting more through its cynical posture rather than its fluctuating execution.