As a popular Chinese saying goes, "Great minds mature slowly." Huo Jianqi showed his talent for directing movies very late.

The amateur burst onto the international scene in 1998, at the age of 40, with the release of the impressive, heart-warming, small-budget production Postman in the Mountains (Nashan, Naren, Nagou).

It is perhaps for that reason that Huo is frequently addressed by many as a "young director," despite the fact that he is actually the peer of the country's famous "fifth generation."

In fact, many paramount fifth generation directors who are currently dominating Chinese cinema, for example Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, were his schoolmates back in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the Beijing Film Academy.

But after a series of thought-provoking pictures and a dozen awards from major domestic and international film festivals, nobody can deny that the late comer has ranked himself among the best Chinese directors.

Subtle auteur

Still, he is quite different from most of his colleagues.

Neither his appearance nor his temperament fit the prevalent public impression of a film director.

He is always neatly and decently dressed, and would never dress or act like those strange and weird avant-garde artists.

Just a few minutes' talk more easily distinguishes him. While most directors are always talkative and voluble and naturally become the centre of the talk, he is not. On the contrary, he is quiet and willing to listen to others. During his spare time, reading is one of his major hobbies.

What's more, he is mild and moderate, more like a writer than a director.

"I was not meant to be a director," said Huo, but added that depicting the subtle inner world of human beings like writers do in novels has long been where his interest lies.

He attended Beijing Film Academy in 1978, at the age of 20, although his major was fine arts. That year, Zhang Yimou was also registered. Between 1982 and 1992, Huo worked as art director on numerous colour features at the Beijing Film Studio, including Tian Zhuangzhuang's Horse Thief (Daoma Zei), one of the best movies that China has ever produced.

Needless to say, the room left for the art director to depict human nature was very limited.

The chance of changing finally came in 1995.

That year Huo made his directorial debut with The Winner (Ying Jia), which won several critical awards in China.

The play was written by his wife Qiu Shi, an MA graduate of Beijing Normal University.

"I was yearning to shoot my own movies, but I had no money to employ playwrights, so I had to let her write them," Huo said.

Following that, he continued to deliver The Singer (Ge Shou, 1996), Postman in the Mountains (1998), A Love of Blueness (Lanse Aiqing, 2000) and Life Show (Shenghuo Xiu, 2003). The scripts of these movies were all written by Qiu Shi.

All the works have at least one thing in common they all focus on sincere relationships between people. Together, they establish a unique unaffected style with a minimum of the theatrical elements.

Huo's third work, Postman in the Mountains, is the one which brought him international reputation.

The film follows a deliriously simple premise: an aging postman passes his route onto his son. The two of them travel together one time. It is the son's first time and the father's last.

It won a trio of awards, including best picture and best actor, at China's top Golden Rooster movie awards.

It achieved greater success in Japan, becoming a box office hit and the talk of the town. So far it has raked in at least 800 million yen (US$7.3 million) in Japan.

Quest for answers

While most other directors are devoted to making blockbusters, hoping to copy Hollywood's commercial miracles, Huo is one of the few who strives to find answers to questions engendered during China's transition from a traditional society into a modern, Western-styled hurried society.

Huo's two latest works, Life Show and Nuan continues this tradition.

The former is about a divorced woman in her 30s who runs a small restaurant in an old section of Wuhan in Central China's Hubei Province.

The film offers a glimpse into the confusing times of such transformation.

Nuan, which won the Tokyo Grand Prix, the Governor of Tokyo Award, at the 16th Tokyo International Film Festival last November, is about a young man who, after 10 years in the city, returns to his childhood village where he reunites with his old love.

All the movies convey sentiments that seem to arise from deep inside the characters, overflowing to the surface - an effect that many Chinese directors fail to achieve, and that has been viewed as Huo Jianqi's unique flavour.

Huo believes that it is his inward character that contributes to the exquisite sensitivity in his movies.

Huo said his life experience has also exerted some subtle or even undetectable influence on his personality, and then his movies.

"I was born and brought up in Beijing. Before I graduated from university, I seldom left the city," said Huo.

The director said he was brought up in a courtyard not far away from the Forbidden City. During his childhood, he rambled about Tian'anmen Square, Jingshan Park, Qianmen and the Working People's Cultural Palace - places that bear the remains of China's ancient history and tradition.

"I swam in the Moat in summer and skated on it in winter. That was a time that I will never forget," said Huo, his eyes filled with a purity seldom found in grown-ups.

In his movies, however, such purity can be found frequently.

"My life has been very smooth, filled with few frustrations and cruelty. Maybe that is why the characters and plots in my movies are so sincere and heart-warming," said Huo.

"I have an instinct to yearn for purity and neatness, and to disgust frightfulness," said Huo.

It is that instinct that distinguishes his movies from other directors' works.

Sadly it cannot assure box office revenues. It seems that movie-goers are more likely to be attracted by blockbusters that cater to sensual needs, like Infernal Affairs or The Lord of The Rings.

Many suspect that despite the awards it won in Tokyo, Nuan will hardly become commercially successful in China.

Though artistically acclaimed, Nuan, as well as other movies by Huo, are thought too subtle for China's movie market, which is still far from mature.

Huo said he is fully aware of the gloomy market prospect of his movies, but as a director, does not care too much.

(China Daily February 2, 2004)