Flying high in one of the world’s most male-dominated film industries, Chinese writer-director Vivian Qu follows up her acclaimed 2017 drama “Angels Wear White” with the almost-good “Girls on Wires.” Focused on the uneasy reunion between two estranged cousins who team up to beat the cycle of drug abuse and debt that’s been dragging their family down for decades, this is ambitious, moral-minded cinema for a mainstream Chinese audience, and as such, it seems only fair to forgive the kind of hammy acting and manipulative melodrama Americans accept from Clint Eastwood and Tyler Perry movies.
There’s something charmingly old-fashioned in the way Qu tries to move viewers, using flashbacks
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