The title character is an 11-year-old girl nicknamed Xiao E'zi (which apparently translates as 'Little Moth'), played by ZHAO Huihui. Little Moth is unable to walk due to "a strange illness", rendering her a valuable, sympathy-magnet commodity for those adults who make an illicit living via street-begging. Her latest 'parents' are the venal Luo (HONG Qifa) - "it's impossible to be in this business if we take pity on others!" - and downtrodden wife Guibua (HAN Dequn). Long inured to her fate, Little Moth is eventually persuaded to escape after befriending one-armed XIAO Chun (ZHANG Lei), who's also a hapless participant in the "business"...Peng's budgetary restrictions only occasionally intrude - specifically, when passers-by stare/grin/point into the camera. And his script loses focus somewhat in the second half, alternating between Little Moth and Guibua to emphasise how adults can also fall foul of exploitation. But these aren't major negatives in what's largely a gripping, convincing and (appropriately) upsetting work of rigorous unsentimentality - including one superlative, late-in-the-day dinner-table sequence (reminiscent of the suffocating claustrophobia of LI Yang's Blind Mountain) when we realise an seemingly fortuitous development for Little Moth isn't all it appears. And young Zhao, though she "does" very little, is excellent throughout - in fact, her excellence lies in how little she does, as the implications of her stoic resignation are infinitely more moving than any amount of tears.Neil Young / jigsawlounge
