Unknown Pleasures

Unknown Pleasures follows two young men in an industrial town in China who have finished school and found nothing to do with themselves. Bin Bin and Xiao Ji are unemployed and drift through their days, with Xiao Ji fixated on Qiao Qiao, a local singer and dancer who works as a spokesmodel for a liquor company. Bin Bin's mother has plans for him that he does not share, and the boredom and restlessness of the two friends push them toward a reckless scheme.

Jia Zhangke directed and wrote the film, which came after his 1997 debut Pickpocket and before Still Life and the features that followed. Zhao Tao plays Qiao Qiao, with Wei Wei Zhao as Bin Bin and Qiong Wu as Xiao Ji. Shozo Ichiyama and Li Kit-Ming produced the film, a co-production between China, Korea, France and Japan. It runs 112 minutes and mixes comedy with drama.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.8 from around 2,800 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.5 from a much smaller base of 57 votes. The two figures sit close together, suggesting a modest but settled reception rather than a sharply divided one, with the larger IMDb sample giving the more stable picture of how the film has been received over time.