Wang Xiaoshuai′s second ′underground′ feature was shot in 1994, soon after The Days, but not post-produced until three years later. In the interim, the Chinese authorities enacted legislation to outlaw independent film-making, and so Wang took the sensible precaution of signing the film with a pseudonym: "Wu Ming" (literally, "No Name"). But since (as in The Days) he spoke the narration in his own distinctive voice, it wasn′t too hard to figure out who had made the film. Frozen springs from the bizarre, self-destructive mood which gripped many of China′s avant-garde artists in the early 1990s; the film incorporates a few authentic performance art events, including a stomach-turning attempt to eat soap. Qi Lei (played by Jia Hongsheng, who re-enacted parts of his performance in Zhang Yang′s bio-pic Quitting) is a moody painter who decides to enact four symbolic suicides to mark the four equinoxes. At the last - burial in ice on midsummer′s day -- he intends to die ... and does so. His death devastates his girffriend Shao Yun and sets Beijing′s arts community chattering about the meaning and value of suicide as a weapon of protest. Only Qi′s friend and confidant Lao Lin seems curiously unmoved by what has happened... The film treats a serious subject seriously, but the element that hits hardest is the wit. (Tony Rayns)