Jia Xhag-ke's Xiao Wu is nearly as dull as his Platform, but rescued by it's shorter running time and sprinkled with some joy in a form of the romance that transpires, a romance that helps one sympathize with the otherwise annoyingly-boring and cold title character. A more observant critic saw far more than I did.
The World is quite a gem: the romance is heartfelt (Jia is real good on that subject, as he proved in Xiao Wu), and the friendship between the Chinese and Russian sweet. Jia is also capable of having me cringe at the ridiculousness/mediocrity of humanity since the title of the movie actually refers to the theme park of various world landmarks, EG a smaller replica of The Eiffel Tower, and, worse even, people taking themselves photos in front of the fakes.