Monotonous life in a factory assumes epic proportions and absurdist tones in a film that at times evokes an almost Felliniesque sensibility in the portrayal of erotic fantasies and outlandish characters – it is no coincidence that the literal translation of the film’s title is “Young Babylon”.
The story, based on the 2014 book by Nu Lei, is told from the viewpoint of the young Lu Xiaolu, who lives in Dai, an industrial town in northern China dominated by a State chemical factory which provides employment for the vast majority of the area’s population. “What should have been the best years of my life were also the worst,” opens the melancholic off-screen voice. Xiaolu is forced by his father to become a trainee in one of the factory’s departments, in the hope that the work experience will give him credit for a future place at university.
To insure his son’s place in the factory, Xiaolu’s father even gives a factory manager his beloved turtle as a gift. But the youngster is twenty years old and his mind is perennially occupied with erotic fantasies rather than getting ahead career-wise… In the factory, Xiaolu is assigned to the mechanics department, where he is surrounded by colleagues as obsessed by sex as he is, and by people who seem to have come straight from a circus: Xiao Ji (Rooster), a lower management figure, petty and vindictive; Niu Mowang, the head of the mechanics department, who enjoys a hearty laugh and doesn’t take himself too seriously, making him popular with his subordinates; a colleague with huge breasts who is convinced all the men lust after her – her bras seem to be like parachutes to the young factory workers; Big Foot, a tall, kindly man, but not too bright; and then there is Bai Lan, the young and beautiful doctor of the factory infirmary, who everyone is in love with but who seems to hail from another world and keeps her distance from them.
Xiaolu first saw her the day an explosion sent all the townsfolk fleeing and she was cycling in the opposite direction, towards the fire.
When he meets her again at the factory, he gradually becomes her friend, clumsily courting her but also helping her ward off the men that pester her.
Factory life resembles school life: the workers of the various departments form rival groups, the managers treat the workers like disobedient children, and jokes and mischief are the order of the day – sometimes assuming tragic overtones.
Bai Lan doesn’t want to talk about her past, and plans to travel in Tibet before moving to Shanghai; when she finally kisses Xiaolu, she manages to convince him to sign up for evening classes which will eventually be his get-out from the factory.
The year is 1994. But despite Xiaolu dedicating himself to his evening studies, it seems that destiny plans to keep him at the factory, where frustration and personal jealousies reach a frenzy in a challenge on who can stay the longest in the overheated bath.
Suddenly, one day there is an earthquake, during which Xiaolu not only sees his erotic dream come true, but he also manages to unveil Bai Lan’s secret.
And immediately afterwards in the factory – which despite its squalor was a hotbed of dreams and grand gestures – another sort of earthquake erupts: workers rebel against management, followed by mass dismissals, the State economy gives way to the market economy and the atmosphere changes irremediably. Insecurity and melancholy take root in Xiaolu’s soul, he reflects on that period of his life and realizes that the only thing he achieved at the age of twenty was to attract the attention of Bai Lan for a brief period of time…