Youth (2017)

"The film serves as a paean to idealism and endurance, yet the word "heart-breaking" comes to mind scene after scene."

"Feng [snakes] his camera exuberantly though scenes that highlight colourful costumes, dynamic choreography and beautiful chorines."

"As a straight, sentimental melodrama, "Youth" works well. While there are a lot of conventional tropes, the cast enacts them with such fresh, tenderhearted sincerity that they regain some power."

"This sweeping saga of a generation marked by political and social upheaval is told with a combination of virtuoso filmmaking and unrelenting schmaltz."

"If our understanding of the losses these characters have suffered feels incomplete, it's hard to come away entirely unaffected as these men and women look back at their young adulthood and the whirlwind of historical change against which it played out."

"Youth, for all its technical prowess, is perhaps the director's most melancholy and pessimistic film about Chinese society yet."