Women Liang

One cold winter’s day, Xiao Ma sets off in search of a room where she can live. It’s snowing and a bitter wind is blowing down the alleyways when she enters the courtyard of an apartment building belonging to an old widow. The room the old lady offers Xiao Ma is small, cold and grossly over-priced, but, because she can’t seem to find anything else for the moment, she decides to move in. She is confident that she will find a nicer room once she has settled in.
Time passes and, the longer Xiao Ma lives in her new room, the better she gets to know her landlady. The old woman turns out to be extremely tight-fisted. Firm in her belief that things such as the telephone and electricity are highly unnecessary luxuries that are flagrantly over-used by her new tenant, the two women soon find themselves arguing about the calculation of the bill. And yet, in spite of their disagreements, a rather special relationship soon developes between them. Xiao Ma learns about a long lost world that has nothing to do with the modern city in which the women now live. And, before long, the older woman finds herself carried along by her young tenant’s vitality and curiosity. And so their initial aversion to each other gradually gives way to warmth and affection. Nevertheless, Xiao Ma is still on the look-out for a room.
Jin Yaqin, who plays the landlady, and the film’s director, Ma Liwen, received China’s most prestigious awards the Golden Rooster and the Golden Horse – in 2005.