Review: 24 City

Developers tear down a factory to built the massive residential and commercial complex of the title, tossing out those who had worked there for decades. A familiar scenario both here and in China, but Jia Zhang-ke has shaped it into a complex and lucid cinematic poem about identity, transience, and loss. The stories of six of the disenfranchised workers, as related by professional actors, intercut the often surreal images of the cavernous, greasy, Mao-era structure as it's being dismantled. In one such sequence, tiny figures carry off the enormous neon Chinese characters from the sign over the factory gate; they look like leafcutter ants razing a tree. And Jia matches his striking and resonant visuals with the sly reflexivity of his dramatized "interviews." A worker nicknamed "Little Flower" in the factory's heyday because she looked like the title character in the 1979 Zhang Zheng film is depicted by Joan Chen — who played Little Flower in the original movie.