Five students holed up in a bourgeois Parisian apartment over the summer of 1967 form a Maoist cell. They spend their days reciting Marxist-Leninist theory before their most assertive member, Véronique, espouses a strategy of engaging in terrorist attacks. THE CHINESE has become renowned for foreshadowing the post-1968 militantism in France. But a less prominent element of the film is the fact that it takes inspiration from Dostoevsky’s satire on 19th century Russian nihilists “The Possessed“.
Five students holed up in a bourgeois Parisian apartment over the summer of 1967 form a Maoist cell. They spend their days reciting Marxist-Leninist theory before their most assertive member, Véronique, espouses a strategy of engaging in terrorist attacks. THE CHINESE has become renowned for foreshadowing the post-1968 militantism in France. But a less prominent element of the film is the fact that it takes inspiration from Dostoevsky’s satire on 19th century Russian nihilists “The Possessed“.
