2/5 stars
After meeting in prison, two young women attempt to get their lives back on track in We Girls, a toe-curlingly moralistic fable from director Feng Xiaogang.
The films bends over backwards to paint China’s prisons as safe, efficient and compassionately run mechanisms for rehabilitating wayward citizens while also gleefully wagging an accusatory finger at the greedy and lazy for exploiting the disabled and disenfranchised.
Zhao Liying and Lan Xiya lead a mostly female cast in a story that encourages women from both sides of the law to band together when the men in their lives inevitably let them down.
To raise 200,000 yuan (US$28,000) to buy a cochlear implant for her deaf daughter, Gao Yuexiang (Zhao) resorts to becoming a “cam girl”, performing strip shows online for money.
She is arrested and sent to prison where, as she understands sign language, corrections officer Deng Hong (Chuo Ni) assigns her to translate for fellow new inmate Mao Amei (Lan), a deaf-mute pickpocket.