Little Red Flowers (2006)

Little Red Flowers (dir. Zhang Yuan) is, I suppose, a critique of totalitarianism and especially a totalitarian form of discipline. A parent takes his son to a kindergarten. It's the kind of kindergarten where the kids stay for a long time, not meeting their parents very often. The film is set, it appears, in the 1960's. The film doesn't tackle the subject of ideology directly. Instead, we see a small boy who is doing everything wrong: he is crying, he cannot dress himself, he pees in the bed, he won't submit to the kindergarten teachers. The children are awarded with small flowers if they are "good". This kid is not, and he is often punished. The film ends with a sense of disillusion: the whole society is like the kindergarten. Even though this is not a perfect film in any way, it was interesting to see the ways in which children conform or don't conform with the attempts to make them compliant and dilligent citizens. It was also interesting to see how every function of life was made a part of routinization: pooping, eating, sleeping, dressing, answering. (Of course, this is a dimension of every child's life almost - but this was a radical example.) -- Not sure how Chinese censors reacted to this film; was it ever distributed in China?