SYNOPSIS
Following up on his award-winning opus Shower, Zhang Yang directs this biographical film concerning and starring Chinese film icon Jia Hong-Sheng, who starred in such groundbreaking works as Suzhou River and Frozen. Following initial professional success, Jia falls into a spiral of depression and drug abuse. Soon he drops out from Beijing's acting scene, withdraws from friends, and locks himself in his apartment listening to old records. His parents, who run a small theater troupe in a remote corner of Northeast China, are elated over their son's success but grow increasingly concerned with his anti-social behavior. Soon they, along with the entire population of the apartment building they live in, venture to Beijing hoping to get Jia out of his funk. Eventually, Jia is committed to a mental institution that makes the one in Titicut Follies look like a trip to Disneyland. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival.
-- Jonathan Crow, allmovieguide

REVIEW
Zhang Yang's fractured film is a quintessential entry from the so-called Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers. Urban, distanced and formally daring, Quitting is a dismal biopic of a Chinese actor whose career and life fell apart as he got increasingly hooked on drugs. The movie's central conceit is that the actor, Jia Hongsheng, as well as his friends and family, play themselves. Part postmodern lark, part Behind the Music episode, Quitting employs a variety of forms and narrative strategies in exploring its subject. The non-linear melange of interviews, footage from Jia's movies, and shots of rehearsals of a stage version of the film seek to give the audience a prismatic view of Jia's downward spiral. Stylistically adventurous though it is, the movie comes across as less than genuine, as Zhang's attempt to interrogate his subject gives way to his shallower preoccupation with formal pyrotechnics. Hardly helping matters is Jia himself, who as star and subject comes across as little more than a spoiled bohemian brat. What little poignancy there is comes from Jia's parents. Uprooted country folk out of place in the city, Jia's mother and father attend to their son selflessly, without a care for their own well-being. It's a touching glimpse of parental devotion that graces this otherwise alienating picture with a touch of humanism