Not One Less (1999): In a remote mountain village, the teacher must leave for a month, and the mayor can find only a 13-year old girl, Wei Minzhi, to substitute. The teacher leaves one stick of chalk for each day and promises her an extra 10 yuan if there's not one less student when he returns. (7.6)
Director: Yimou Zhang
Stars: Minzhi Wei, Huike Zhang and Zhenda Tian
Lang: Mandarin (Eng Subtitled)
The acting in the movie isn't worth writing home about and the story is quite simplistic. Then I read the Wikipedia article about the movie and realized that Zhang Yimou is using real people to in a docu-drama style. The story between the lines is the plight of the rural communities in modern (1990's) China. Yimou directed "The Road Home" around the same time, with a similar theme, but I liked that a whole lot more because the storyline was a lot stronger. My rating: 6.0
