Chinese actress Ying Ze. [Photo/Xinhua]

Underground Fragrance

was the first feature film for the young director, who was born in a family linked to the Beijing opera scene and studied film direction at the Institut International de l'Image et du Son in France.

His international experience helped Peng find the inspiration for Underground Fragrance. "While I was studying in France, I found there was a special attention for the quality of cinema there," he said while stressing the responsibility that directors have, especially when abroad, in presenting their own countries to the world.

"I liked this film very much as it makes a picture of the Chinese society as a whole. For example, it shows the economic problems of citizens and their daily difficulties," Maria Cristina Lenarduzzi, member of local cultural circle, told Xinhua after watching the film at the Lido of Venice. Those presented in the film, she noted, are aspects of China that are not so known in Western countries and deserve to be learnt.

"Underground Fragrance describes the rapid evolution of nowadays' China, with its social and human relations, and the disparities caused by such a fast economic and urban development," said another spectator, Massimo Belluzzo.

"I regularly watch Chinese films, I have seen many of them, and it seems to me that Underground Fragrance has especially insisted on social aspects. It belongs to a new trend of realist films in China that I think are of great importance and interest," he added.

"In fact good films are a treasure for society," said Ying Ze, who plays Xiao Yun in Underground Fragrance and is also its co-producer. She has a diploma from the London School of Economics, and Underground Fragrance was the first time that she had a first role in a feature film.

Ying told Xinhua in an interview that films with an artistic value have also the power to propose the good aspects of change and transformation. Herself a Chinese girl with doubts and contradictions, just like her character, Ying recalled that she also went through a period when she felt "lost" and did not know what to do with her life.