In one of the best Chinese films of the year, an impressive cast and crew examine crippling shame and the transcendence of love against the backdrop of the ’90s blood scandal in Henan when thousands of donors become infected with HIV.

The fictional story is set in a village in northern China where dozens contract the virus after selling blood to an unscrupulous plasma merchant. The infected–women and men, elderly and children–are shunned by the other villagers and form a ramshackle community in an abandoned school, deserted after the teachers fear catching the disease from pupils. We’re left to ask: if the village’s most educated are so ignorant about the risks of infection, what chance do the poor villagers have of understanding the disease?

Director Gu Changwei’s early career was spent as a cinematographer working for Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, and his eye for vast, beautiful landscape shots is undeniable. It’s an irony that the more desperate the situation becomes, the more ethereally picturesque the environment grows. At the film’s core is the idea that the isolation and rejection experienced by the villagers will set them free. Those uninfected remain in their honor / shame, face-obsessed culture, where nothing matters more than outward appearances, social escalation and the possibility of being buried in a better coffin than the neighbors. Those infected by the virus sink to the bottom rungs of the social order, but from that position are able to see what they really want and embrace it without caring what others think.

This makes the film far less bleak than you might fear. Yes, we are watching the slow and painful death of dirt-poor Chinese peasants infected with a cruel, misunderstood and fatal disease. But more than anything, this is a love story, and the passionate relationship that emerges from this bleak situation is uplifting because it laughs in the face of the hypocrisy of the other villagers and the greed of the man who causes the infections.

It’s impressive that such a nuanced approach to the disease won the support and involvement not just of the Chinese authorities but of heavyweight stars Zhang Ziyi and Cantopop heartthrob Aaron Kwok. But Wang Baoqiang, who you might have seen in Blind Shaft or A World Without Thieves, steals the show with another comic but ultimately heart breaking performance as a naïve, well-meaning Party enthusiast. And it’s he who delivers the only truly emotionally devastating moment of the film.

Love for Life is available on DVD in Chinese with English subtitles.