Ambitious writer-director Jia Zhang Ke again captures the complex weave of life in contemporary China in Unknown Pleasures. Doomed to a life of sibling-less solitude and taunted by the burgeoning capitalism that has reached their town only in its crudest form, the disaffected youth of dreary Datong lead an existence wrought with ennui in a turbulent time. World events -- the bombing of a factory, China's entry into the WTO, and the selection of Beijing to host the Olympics -- flash by as background noise while these young people look for excitement wherever they can find it. Violent interactions and romantic longing all seem forced or staged as a way to stem off emptiness, a point Jia brings home in the film's bank robbery climax. Jia references Jean-Luc Godard and Quentin Tarantino, thus placing his film in a cinematic context as well as a historical one. There are many dryly funny moments in the film, including the scene wherein a minor character played by Hong Wei Wang, who also starred in Jia's earlier films, Xiao Wu (Pickpocket) and Zhantai (Platform), chides a bootleg DVD dealer who doesn't stock those films. Languorously paced, and marked by long takes from a respectful distance, the film explicates the detachment of these aimless characters from the world around them.