The 2014 film 黄金时代

choi

Sheri Linden, 'The Golden Era' a 'Reds'-Like Tale of Chinese Novelist Xiao Hong. Los Angeles Times, Oct 17, 2014
www.latimes.com/entertainment/mo ... 20141017-story.html
(film review on The Golden Era 黄金时代 (2014): Hong Kong's submission for the foreign-language Oscar)

My comment:
(a) XIAO Hong  蕭紅 (1911-1942; born 張廼瑩 (simplified Chinese 张乃莹) in 黑龍江省呼蘭縣, died in Hong Kong)
(b) "Xiao is played with understated ferocity by TANG Wei 汤 唯 ('Lust, Caution'). After a scandalous affair leaves her destitute and endangered, she finds salvation and community among writers. Those connections shape the film, yet they remain at a remove."

remove (n): "a degree of remoteness or separation"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/remove
(c) "Actors portraying editors and writers who knew Xiao speak directly to the viewer, delivering narration within scenes that combines testimony and conjecture. The point is that much of Xiao's life — or any artist's, really — remains unknown. Working from a screenplay by LI Qiang 李 樯, veteran director Ann HUI 許 鞍華 handles the fourth-wall-breaking transitions smoothly, but the device remains just that."

fourth wall
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall
(Speaking directly to, otherwise acknowledging or doing something to the audience through a camera in a film or television program, or through this imaginary wall in a play, is referred to as "breaking the fourth wall")
(d) "With and without the fellow writer 蕭軍 [1907-1988] ([played by] FENG Shaofeng 冯 绍峰) who becomes her great love and her bane, her creative partner and professional rival, Xiao lives an itinerant life. Moments of powerful immediacy sustain the story, key among them Xiao's startlingly frank, self-aware wedding speech to her 'bourgeois' groom 端木蕻良 [原名曹京平; 1912-1996] (an affecting Yawen ZHU 朱亚文)."

端木姓
zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/端木姓
is NOT a Japanese surname, as I had thought.
(e) When I left Taiwan in 1984, few people there, if any, had heard of the literati mentioned in this LA Times report.