In these dark days of very real disaster, and simply PR disaster (zai jian, Sharon Stone), it’s refreshing to hear cheery news on at least one topic: international co-productions. At the Shanghai Film Festival in June, an official from China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) re-asserted China’s openness to foreign filmmakers and collaborations.

Co-productions have been a mainstay of Hong Kong cinema from the beginning, and the concept has stayed the same: filmmakers from two (or more) places are joint-investors in a movie they hope will appeal to two or more audiences (because of multinational stars, themes, or locations). Enter the Dragon (1973) was the first big co-production between Hong Kong and Hollywood, which helped make Bruce Lee a crossover star and HK a hub for these type of projects.

But when using funds, locations, stars, or companies from the Chinese mainland, things get trickier, especially when straying from ‘safe’ genres such as martial arts or ancient epics – i.e. Forbidden Kingdom, Three Kingdoms, and anything with ‘Kingdom’ in the title. It was just a few months ago when the high-profile and historically-complex period film Shanghai (starring John Cusack and Gong Li), already three months and USD$3 million into development, was denied a shooting permit and relocated to Bangkok.

It seems China is going to keep expanding its co-productions, and ‘facilitations’ (movies that are not full partnerships but at least assisted by a Chinese company), but can’t guarantee they won’t get censored or punished along the way. On the other hand, there may be a few arguments against total freedom for foreign filmmakers in China: absolutely ridiculous-looking films.

Trailer: Milk & Fashion

A recent release in Mainland theatres was Milk & Fashion, which (judging by its perplexing trailer, which can be viewed on YouTube) concerns a Western teenage boy living in Yunnan who wants to be a ballet dancer, and the Chinese teenage girl who helps him to follow his dream. Her dream is to be a fashion-designer, and he helps her follow that dream, too. There’s lots of dream-following, featuring lots of foreigners speaking labored Mandarin. Oh yes, and a runway dance-off.

Trailer: An American in China

Eerily similar is something called An American in China, which, surprisingly, is about an American boy in China; a post-college grad just bumming around, who goes to China at the behest of his father (played by Michael Gross from Family Ties fame), and when he arrives, lowers his sunglasses and says “whoa.” It’s summed up by the tagline: “Sometimes the path you’re looking for… is on the other side of the world.” And indeed, the person who helps him find that path is… a young Chinese girl.

Though neither is a true co-production, these two recent ventures by ‘Americans in China’ seem to reflect something about the dangers of international filmmaking, the ones not even SARFT can protect against. When co-production (or foreign locations, or clichés) become the ends, not the means, to tell a story, not even a young Chinese girl can show you the right path. Samantha Culp