Lost in Beijing

In spite of its raw, explicit moments, the film is at heart a sturdy morality tale about innocence and corruption, wealth and want, sex and power.

Money (and maybe a little bit of love) makes the world go around in Lost in Beijing, an involving, highly accessible portrait of an emotional menage a quatre in the modern-day Chinese capital.

Part soap opera, part sitcom and part relocated French farce.

The story is contrived. Would you believe a high-rise window-washer just happening to be cleaning the window of the room where, at that very moment, his wife is being raped by her boss? Didn't think so.

The prevalent shooting style is monotonous naturalism, as the camera buzzes between contentious actors and trolls after anything on the move. No performance registers quite so much as the capital city itself.

The script by first-time director Li Yu and producer Fang Li introduces some degree of subtlety in the responses of the four principals, but the plot doesn't really hold up.