DPA
Berlin, Feb 12: A love film story set against the tensions between Taiwan and mainland China opened the 60th anniversary Berlin Film Festival Thursday.
The world premiere of Chinese director Wang Quan'an's Tuan Yuan (Apart Together) about the return of a veteran from the Chinese civil war for a bittersweet reunion with his first great love also kicked off the race for the Berlinale's coveted Golden Bear for best picture.
"Reunification, that is what the Chinese are looking for; that is their greatest ideal," Wang told a press conference marking the movie's screening.
"It's something that everyone yearns for," said Wang, whose Tuya's Marriage, about a woman's search for a suitor to look after her and her disabled husband, won the Golden Bear in 2007.
The message of "Apart Together" is that "these hopes (of reunion) will be fulfilled," said Wang, who was born in 1965 and is a member of China's so-called sixth or urban generation of filmmakers, whose movies help charter the fast-paced changes under way in the Asian powerhouse.
The main programme for this year's Berlinale has a special focus on Asia, with Japanese master filmmaker Yoji Yamada's Otouto ("About Her Brother") selected to close the festival.
Veteran Chinese director Zhang Yimou also returns to Berlin with his latest movie San qiang pai an jing qi ("A Woman, A Gun And A Noodle Shop") which is about just that - a noodle shop owner whose wife gives her lover a gun to kill her husband.
Zhang Yimou's success in 1988 in winning the Golden Bear for "Red Sorghum" was seen as a major step in opening up Chinese cinema to the world.
The festival's jury, headed by German director Werner Herzog and including Oscar-winning actress Renee Zellweger and Chinese screen star Yu Nan, will hand out the Berlinale's awards at a gala ceremony Febr 20.
The spotlight Friday will be on the latest movie by controversial French-Polish director Roman Polanski, who is at present holed up in his Swiss chalet fighting extradition to the US for a child-sex case from 1977.
Speaking in Berlin, Wang insists that he did not set out to make a film about Beijing's conflict with Taiwan.
"I am not particularly interested in external events," he said. "What is important for me is the life of ordinary people," he said, adding it was a theme which could be found in many nations.
While the fraught links between China and Taiwan still shape their domestic politics and international relations, the frictions between Beijing and Taipei seem often removed from the lives of ordinary people.
Liu Yansheng, the so-called "Taiwanese man" played by Taiwan's singer-turned actor Feng Ling, is welcomed by a local band, a special meal prepared by the family to celebrate his arrival in Shanghai and warm words from the husband of the woman he has returned to see.
But as was the case with Tuya's Marriage, "Apart Together" is about a woman, Qiao Yu'e who finds herself at the centre of two men.
Played by legendary Chinese actress Lisa Lu, Qiao Yu'e has to decide to between a sense of duty to the husband she has grown old with and her first great love who after decades of separation wants to spend the last years of their life together.
"They have to find their way through events," said Wang, including bridges differences shaped by geographical distances and a long period apart.
Lu said the role gave her the chance to think about "the romantic side of love and the second side of love, which is often shaped more by gratitude."
Now in her 80s, Lu has a movie career spanning five decades and includes films such as Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" and Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution".
But as the movie comes to an end the wheel of history takes another turn as the granddaughter played by rising Chinese star Monica Mo announces that she is to marry but after her husband to be returns two years later from the US.
Now housed in a modern Shanghai apartment block, Qiao Yu'e and her husband struggle to recreate the lively world that they had in one of the city's old residential quarters with its markets and strong sense of neighbourhood.