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Blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction, 'Sixth Generation' Chinese film-maker Jia Zhangke (Platform, Unknown Pleasures) returns with this low-key, observational study of uprooted lives in twenty-first century China. The setting for Still Life is the ancient town of Fenjgie on the Yangste River, which is being demolished and rebuilt as part of the Three Gorges Dam project. It's here that Han Sanming, a coalminer, and Shen Hong (Zhao Tao) arrive, both in search of their respective spouses.

Having travelled from far-away Shanxi province, Han Sanming hasn't seen his paid-for-bride and their teenage daughter for some sixteen years, whilst Shen Hong is looking for her estranged engineer husband to ask for a divorce. Plotting however comes very much a distant second to atmosphere in Still Life, which is crisply photographed in high-definition digital video. Favouring slow plans, Jia contrasts the natural beauty of the surrounding mountains and river with the man-made destruction heaped on the environment. Han Sanming and Shen Hong pick their way through the rubble-strewn landscape, accompanied in their quest by the hammering of the demolition gangs.

"BLESSED BY SOME UNEXPECTEDLY SURREAL IMAGES"

In many ways Still Life offers a bleak vision of the profound social and economic changes sweeping contemporary China, and Jia's sympathies clearly lie with those marginalized by the prevailing get-rich-quick ethos. Yet his film is also blessed by some unexpectedly surreal images - including a UFO streaking over the horizon, a building being fired off into space, and a tightrope walker attempting a mid-air crossing - and in its own understated way, it pays tribute to human yearning and resilience.

Still Life is out in the UK on 1st February 2008.