Based on Wang Shuo’s novella and adapted for the screen by the author, Samsara is a timely film depicting a generation of young people trying to cope with life in a more open society. Shi Ba is a self-employed profiteer, skilled in deceiving, bragging, speculating and playing. He drifts through life, rootless and aloof, relatively happy to exist outside society. After meeting a beautiful dancer and trying to reform himself, Shi Ba finds his shady past connections leave him in a surprising world of psychological turmoil. The film offers powerful insight into the cultural changes in late 1980s China.
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