BY JEFFREY M. ANDERSON
Of The Examiner Staff

Postmen in the Mountains

Starring Rujun Ten, Ye Liu. Directed by Huo Jianqi; written by Si Wu. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Opens today at the 4 Star Movie Theater.

Advertised as "from the makers of Chen Kaige's 'Together'," the new film "Postmen in the Mountains" looked as if it would be one of those sweet, brain-dead foreign films that Miramax loves to scoop up, filled to bursting with swelling violin-and-angel-choir music and tear-filled hellos and goodbyes.

Thankfully, I was wrong. Within minutes "Postmen in the Mountains" proves itself a quietly beautiful tale in which very little is shown and everything is imagined.

It turns out that the film's director, Huo Jianqi, has less in common with Chen Kaige than he does with Chen's fifth-generation colleague, Tian Zhuangzhuang. In fact, Huo worked as art director on the greatest Chinese movie ever made, Tian's "The Horse Thief" (1986).

"Postmen in the Mountains" follows a deliriously simple premise: An aging postman (Rujun Ten) passes his route onto his son. The two of them travel it together one time -- the son's first time and the father's last. The catch is that the route winds up and around the mountains and takes three days to complete (think of the overtime!).

Father and son remain mostly quiet on the trail, with their faithful dog trotting on ahead and announcing the mail's arrival. Huo sometimes shows us their thoughts in misty flashbacks. The son remembers feeling scared of his father, and the father remembers meeting his wife while on his route.

When they do speak, it's usually to argue, but the arguments are petty (should they listen to the radio or shouldn't they?) and merely cover up for the epic timelessness of this trip.

For example, the postman usually delivers a letter to an old blind woman; the envelope contains money and a blank piece of paper. The postman pretends to read the "letter" to the woman, telling her how her children and grandchildren are faring in the big city.

Huo handles the scene beautifully, not only in itself, but also in regards to the bigger picture. While he reads, we ponder: How long did it take for him to get into this routine? How many trips along the route? Is this something the son could have learned on his own?

In another village, a happy couple has postponed their wedding until the postman has arrived and can join them. He's part of an enormous community, but also utterly alone.

Indeed, the entire movie swims delightfully in such universal contradictions. Each and every tiny gesture or footstep along the path has enormous repercussions; it's both an old routine and completely new. When father and son stop for a rest, we know that this spot will continue to live on in the son's memory after he takes the route solo, each time he passes it.

Sometimes Huo slips just a little. In one scene, the wind carries away a handful of letters. The father and his dog chase after them in slow motion, which adds extra significance to an event that doesn't need it. And when the son carries the father across a frigid stream on his back, the narration doubles up, telling us what we're already thinking.

But for the most part, Huo succeeds with a superb debut, using a painterly sense of landscape to capture its beauty and its flow. "Postmen in the Mountains" crosses the line between subtlety and sweetness to become the most intelligent audience-friendly foreign language film since "Jean de Florette" and "Manon of the Spring."

Unfortunately, the English subtitles on this print are so poorly translated that we sometimes don't understand what the characters are saying. Nonetheless, the physical beauty of the film speaks volumes. Don't miss it.