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MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Iron & Silk’: Innocent Abroad

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

In the unsophisticated, bittersweet “Iron & Silk” (AMC Century 14), Mark Salzman plays himself (more or less) as an all-American innocent arriving alone in immense and impenetrable China. Enchanted by kung-fu movies from the age of 11, Salzman grew up to major in Chinese language and literature at Yale. In 1982, he landed his first job after graduation from college teaching English to adults in Hunan (Hangzhou in the film).

The boyishly handsome Salzman is as eager as a puppy to be accepted by the Chinese he encounters, but he learns his mastery of their language is not nearly enough. His pupils, who formerly taught Russian, take to him quickly, but others are far more standoffish.

An elegant older woman (Jeanette Lin Tsui) becomes his tutor in all matters Chinese from customs to calligraphy, but winning the respect of a martial arts master (Pan Qingfu, likewise playing himself) becomes a major challenge. Even more difficult is his pursuit of a lovely but diffident Chinese girl (Vivian Wu), a lover of English literature who insists that China is “not as free as it seems.”

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In his naivete, Salzman has a hard time accepting that Communist Party officials could consider him a source of “spiritual pollution” as a “bourgeois liberal” or that the slightest involvement with Wu could endanger her medical career and even place her family in jeopardy.

Director Shirley Sun, who adapted with Salzman his book of the same name to the screen, finished shooting the day before the Tian An Men Square Massacre. While expressing a boundless love for China and its people, the film nevertheless tempers its hopes for its future with an acceptance that change is an exceedingly slow proposition as it charts Salzman’s maturing process and self-discovery.

Salzman, who has impressive martial arts skills, has a pleasant screen presence which helps sustain some of his hokier antics.

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