Keep Cool (1997) on Netflix
Bookseller Zhao Xiaoshuai chases An Hong, who has taken up with nightclub owner Liu Delong. When Liu's men beat him, a bystander's laptop is wrecked, and Zhang Qiusheng wants payment.
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- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.2/102,534 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Zhao Xiaoshuai sells books in Beijing and cannot let go of An Hong, the woman who has left him. He trails her through the city to her high-rise flat, then pays a junk peddler to shout his love for her from the street below. An Hong lets him into her apartment the next day, but a man on the pavement reciting poetry through a megaphone interrupts them and she leaves in a temper. Some time later, at a public bicycle stand, thugs working for nightclub owner Liu Delong beat Xiaoshuai and warn him off An Hong. Zhang Qiusheng, a middle-aged stranger, sends him to a hospital and then asks Xiaoshuai to pay for the new laptop that got wrecked in the beating. Xiaoshuai refuses, and says Zhang should collect the money from Liu Delong.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Keep Cool (1997)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Chinese censors pulled Keep Cool from its scheduled world premiere at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival at the last minute, part of a wider tightening of control over China's film industry after Zhang Yuan's gay-themed East Palace, West Palace, then demanded substantive story changes, most notably a happy ending.
- Keep Cool was the first time director Zhang Yimou made a film without actress Gong Li, and only the third time he set one in the modern era rather than the past.
- Zhang Yimou's first urban comedy, Keep Cool, used a hip rock soundtrack and a roving handheld camera with multiple jump cuts to give the film the feel of contemporary Beijing.
