"The missing star", who competed for the Golden Lion at 2006 Venice Film Festival, is a film that, when you think about, the first adjective that comes to your mind is: intense. Intense looks, intense sequences, this movie's intensity captures the viewer since the very first scenes at the steelworks, in Italy (I couldn't recognize the city, maybe Genoa or even Naples), although the pace is quite slow.<br /><br />Vincenzo Buonavolontà, the male lead, and with him, all the audience, sees a completely different China than a normal Westerner imagines: horrible high-rise building with about 8 hundred flat owners inside, skyscrapers, desolation, fog, scrapers and cranes everywhere, but also the beauty of the Yangtze Kiang river, that will soon become a big lake because of the controversial dike that will wipe a lot of towns out. China is a country under construction, but, under all these colossal public works, there are still poverty, backwardness and unfair laws.<br /><br />We can relate more easily to this story because Gianni Amelio, the expert director, chose two phenomenal leads: Sergio Castellitto, a well-known actor in Italy, and the Chinese surprise Tai Ling, a total unknown girl that gives an as intense interpretation as Castellitto's.<br /><br />The film is not perfect, there are some flaws here and there, but that doesn't mean it's a mediocre film. Try to see it.