Joan Chen in "24 City," Cinema Guild, 2009

In the week’s craftiest casting, Jia Zhang-ke, in his signature spectacular mix of fact and fiction “24 City,” has Joan Chen play Gu Minhua, a former worker at a munitions factory, where she was given the nickname “Little Flower,” based on her resemblance to the title character of the 1980 movie -- who was played by Chen in real life. Some have criticized Jia for interspersing scripted monologues by actresses among actual interviews with laborers in his chronicle of the factory’s conversion to an upscale apartment complex in Chengdu, taking umbrage at the director’s belief that “history is always a blend of facts and imagination.” For as much as “24 City” is about history, it’s also about an uneasy nostalgia for China’s industrial past; having Chen -- once known as “the Elizabeth Taylor of China” -- play a gem-sweatered woman who regales her “interviewer” with tales about her legendary status at the factory only enriches this sense of lost time.

Melissa Anderson is our guest critic for the month of June.

“Séraphine,” “Tennessee,” “Away We Go,” and “24 City” open in limited release on June 5th.

[Additional photos: Ethan Peck, Mariah Carey and Adam Rothenberg in "Tennessee," Vivendi Entertainment; Maya Rudolph, John Krasinski and Maggie Gyllenhaal in "Away We Go," Focus Features, 2009]

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