腊月 (The Twelfth Lunar Month, 2019) arrives as a modest yet culturally significant entry in China's growing catalogue of rural realism cinema. Director Liu Shuwei's semi-documentary examination of the bride price custom (彩礼) in Southwest Shandong doesn't dazzle with technical virtuosity, but it offers an unvarnished window into a social phenomenon that continues to fracture rural families.
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