With Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, actress Joan Chen (Twin Peaks) joins the so-called "Fifth Generation" Chinese filmmakers, a movement of courageous, politically committed directors responsible for some of the richest cinema of the last decade. While it would be unfair to expect her debut to measure up to the formidable work of Xhang Yimou (Raise The Red Lantern), Chen Kaige (Farewell, My Concubine), and Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Blue Kite), Chen's wan fable sorely lacks their historic pull and, more disturbing, accepts tragedy with needless passivity and sentimentality. Xiu Xiu is set during the last year of the Cultural Youth Revolution, Mao Zedong's misbegotten campaign to eradicate class differences by sending nearly eight million young people from the city to specialized training in the country's remote provinces. Uprooted from her home and family, Lu Lu gets "sent down" to an isolated Tibetan steppe, where she's assigned to learn horse-training from Lopsang, a quiet and sullen old herder. When it becomes apparent that her tour of duty will never end, she welcomes a succession of government officials into their encampment in the futile hope that sexual favors will prompt her eventual deliverance. Lopsang develops a paternal affection for Lu Lu and watches over her, yet his inaction in the face of her repeated exploitation doesn't make much sense, as he's wise enough to know it won't get her anywhere. Chen means to lament Lu Lu's (and China's) loss of youthful innocence, but she drives the story toward a bleak, contrived conclusion that betrays the well-wrought and affecting bond between her characters. In other Fifth Generation films, political forces deal tragedy to those powerless to stop it; in Xiu Xiu, it's dealt entirely by the director's hand.