Tag: Chinese

Decision To Leave (Heojil Kyolshim)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

South Korea. City-based detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il from The Fortress, Hwang Dong-hyuk, 2017; The Host, 2006, Memories Of Murder, 2003, both Bong Joon ho) is married to a science nerd (Jung Yi-seo) who works at a nuclear plant in the seaside town of Ipo. Whatever sexual or romantic energy once existed between them has long since evaporated. She tolerates sex with him once a week on the grounds that research has shown it’s good for you and keeps you sharp, but she doesn’t appear to enjoy it much, going through the motions of a necessary chore. There doesn’t seem to be much more to this marriage for either of them than keeping up appearances. She lives and works in Ipo while he spends most of his working time away in the city, often going on nighttime stakeouts to observe suspects and forget about his habitual insomnia.

Which means that when Hae-joon finds himself investigating a case in which skilled amateur climber Ki Do-soo (Yoo Seung-mok from The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil, Lee Won-Tae, 2019; also The Host, Memories Of Murder) has fallen from a great height and the dead man’s Chinese-born wife Seo-rye (Tang Wei from Lust, Caution, Ang Lee, 2007) is a murder suspect, the detective is much more interested in her as a romantic subject than as a possible perpetrator, and this sensibility clouds his judgement. Eventually the case is closed, and she gets off scot-free, but the more time Hae-joon spends with her after this, and the more we see of her, the more likely it seems that she was the murderer.

The above constitutes what one might call the film’s first act. This first act and the subsequent second act, in which certain plot elements recur, recalls Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958). In the second act, Hae-joon has moved to the seaside town presumably so that he can spend more time with his wife. One day the couple are wandering though the fish market where they run into Seo-rye, who by coincidence has likewise moved into the area, with her new and shady financial consultant husband in tow. The latter seems more keen than he should be to talk to Hae-joon’s wife and leaves her his card.

It turns out this second husband has a history as a scam merchant and has made a lot of enemies along the way. Before we get to know him much more, however, he turns up dead in his swimming pool. His wife could be responsible, but there is another suspect too, a victim of his sharp business practices, who looks more likely.

Rather than allowing all this to unfold in straightforward linear narrative fashion, director Park works in terms of layers and constantly jumps back and forth throughout. This is at once enthralling and infuriating to watch; enthralling because of the myriad of painstakingly worked out details piled on top of one another, infuriating because there is so much going on at any one time that it’s easy to lose track.

Things might make more sense on a second viewing, but equally they might simply prove as confusing as they did first time round. Without a second watch, it’s impossible to say. Nevertheless, it’s a very rich film, thoroughly engrossing; one to which, having seen it once, you’ll want to return.

Decision To Leave is out in cinemas from Friday, 21st October. On Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Curzon Home Cinema in March.

White Snake (Baishe: Yuanqi)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Conceived as a prequel to China’s White Snake legend which has spawned numerous adaptations including Green Snake / Ching se (Tsui Hark, 1993), this computer animated Chinese epic concerns demon sisters Blanca and Verta (voiced by Zhang Zhe and Tang Xiaoxi) who look to all intents and purposes like beautiful women but are actually demon snakes in disguise – a white snake and a green snake as you might guess from their names. With her power and form enhanced by her sister’s gift of a green hairpin, Blanca leaves the demon world and visits ours for a showdown with a human General trying to prove his worth to the Emperor by dabbling in occult rituals involving snakes. When the showdown doesn’t go as planned, Blanca finds herself alone and suffering a complete loss of memory as to who (and indeed what) she is.

She awakes in a small, human, rural village where the local economy is built on catching snakes for the General. Local boy Sean (Yang Tianxiang) has no interest in catching snakes, spending his time instead sourcing toys for the local children or inventing things. Smitten with the amnesiac Blanca, Sean is astonished when by magic she rescues his dog Dudou from falling off a mountain ledge and by further magic gives the animal a human voice. Sean eagerly scrambles after Blanca as she flies up perilous mountain terrain, trying hard to look beyond her growing a snake’s tail when she does so, preferring to think of her as a woman rather than a demon.

It’s a strange and somehow very Chinese combination of creature feature, mythology and full on romance with the girl torn between the human and demon realms and the boy trying to justify his feelings for her. The physical effects work that Hong Kong would have been used 25 years ago is replaced by CGI which is generally of a higher standard than you would expect. As well as the two sisters, the snakes include a whole army of snake people whose cinematic origins go right back to Ray Harryhausen’s human-torsoed, snake-tailed Medusa in Clash Of The Titans (1981) and his similarly built, dancing girl in The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (1958). The snake people’s leader, much like the two sisters, switches between woman and snake, in her case an ethereal, yellow fire snake.

Equally inventive is the creature that pulls the General’s chariot, which looks like a crane with three heads. Other highlights include a spectacular firebird and malevolent black manifestations of the General’s dark magic. When Sean and Blanca reach the forge where the green hairpin was made, they meet another demon in the form of a woman with two faces, one human and, when she turns round, one fox.

The whole thing is beautifully paced with never a dull moment. Full blooded romantics will be struck by a memorable ending which throws into the mix Chinese concepts of reincarnation. Anyone who enjoyed the action movies coming out of Hong Kong in their halcyon days of the eighties and nineties prior to Hollywood’s co-opting such stunts for The Matrix (The Wachowski Brothers, 1999) will love this. Hong Kong did some amazing stunts using aerial wire work back then, but that will only get you so far and White Snake puts CGI to full and highly effective use, getting the most out of the medium and achieving things that would be near impossible in live action. So, to all intents and purposes an old school Hong Kong action fantasy redone as computer animation – and it works wonderfully. A joy.

White Snake played in the BFI London Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. On Amazon Prime from February (2021).

The Farewell

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

New Yorker Billi (Awkwafina) is constantly being phoned from China by her granny or Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen). Billi has lived in the US since age six and is now thoroughly Westernised with her own apartment.

It therefore comes as something of a shock to learn that her parents Haiyan (Tzi Ma) and Lu Jian (Diana Lin) are going to China ostensibly for her wedding of her Japanese immigrant cousin Hau Hau (Chen Han) but actually to see Nai Nai before she dies. The latter has been diagnosed with stage four cancer and her sister Little Nai Nai (Hong Lu) who looks after her in China has decided it would be better if Nai Nai didn’t know. So the extended family are going to China with all of them sworn to secrecy about the real reason for their visit.

Pitched as a US movie, this is mostly in Mandarin with subtitles. Maybe 10% is spoken in English. Plus a smidgen is in Japanese with no subs, as Hau Hau’s Japanese bride Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara) speaks no Chinese.

While the film works well enough as a family drama, where it really scores is in the tension between the two cultures, Chinese and US American. The Chinese is all about family, society and the greater good while the US American by way of contrast is all about the individual.

Nai Nai and her Chinese relatives want to know when Billi is getting married, and how much money she is going to make, whereas she herself is more interested in self-expression as a writer. More poignantly however, the Easterners see not telling someone they are terminally ill as a good thing because the protected person will enjoy life more, whereas the Westerners see it in terms of keeping a dreadful truth from someone who should be told about it.

Director Wang derives a degree of absurdist comedy from all this, yet these underlying cultural conflicts lend the proceedings a sense of gravitas. After last year’s shallow but fun, US Chinese comedy Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M.Chu, 2018), The Farewell grapples with tough intercultural conflicts on a very deep level with echoes of Taiwanese-American outing The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993). It’s possible that Western and Eastern audiences may view the film very differently. But in both cases, it’s worth viewing.

The Farewell is out in the UK on Friday, September 20th. On VoD in April. Watch the film trailer below:

Nina Wu

Posted on by victorfraga

Nina is young and pretty. she has left rural Taiwan and moved to glitzy Taipei in search of a promising opportunity as a film star. She’s advised, however, that the role includes full frontal nudity in bed with two men. She’s told: “if that makes you uncomfortable don’t even audition for the it”. She auditions and wins. But that’s just the start of her problems. The menacing filmmaker manipulates her constantly. He emotionally harasses her in order to elicit the strongest emotions. At times, it’s unclear whether Nina’s acting or genuinely frightened.

What starts out as a didactic #MeToo statement about abuse in the film industry gradually develops into something far more complex and sinister. Some of the sequences within the film being made border absurdity. Nina is on a dinghy full of boxes. The police arrives and orders the shooting to stop. The boxes explode and a bloodied Nina jumps into the water. She nearly dies. The credits roll. Maybe this is a film within a film within a film. There’s a also dream within a dream within a dream. The layers of reality, allegory and imagination blend seamlessly.

Ke-xi is spectacular. She has the power to convey the most varies emotions with her facial expressions. She will make you laugh and cry. And she can navigate comfortably through the film’s various narratives layers, confounding viewers about her real emotions.

The story zigzags back and forth in time, and in the second half of the movie we learn the details of the extremely bizarre audition. The producer pits women against each other, turning the aspiring film stars into vile bitches (literally). The invidious female who ended second seeks to exact revenge on Nina. We also learn that Nina is a Lesbian in a relationship with a woman in her hometown back in the countryside. This is a very significant point, as Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalise gay marriage just a few days ago. Nina, however, prioritises her career ahead of the romance. Perhaps because she thinks that the country isn’t prepared to accept a Lesbian actress just yet.

The film is dotted with strange imagery, bordering the surreal. A gecko moves inside a lamp. Nina is tortured on a stretcher inside a beauty clinic. She runs outside covered in plastic wrap and strangers snap her with their phone. Plus the audition and filming are extremely bizarre. And funny. Nina Wu balances out tension and humour extremely well.

Stick around until the very end of this 103-minute film. A lot comes full circle in the last sequence. This isn’t just a psychological thriller dotted with the bizarre gimmicks and narrative tricks. It has something very serious to say.

Nina Wu showed in the 72th Cannes International Film Festival, as part of the Un Certain Regard section (2019), when this piece was originally written. This isn’t the only film in the event dealing with a male director humiliating and manipulating the film actresses. Gaspar Noe does it too, if from a very different and far more disturbing perspective.

The film premieres in the UK in October in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF). On Mubi on Tuesday, July 13th (2021)

So Long My Son

Posted on by victor@dmovies.org

It’s not uncommon for a film festival to leave its crowning jewel for near the end of the festival, and Berlinale 2019 may just have found theirs in the form of So Long, My Son, the epic (in terms of both content and duration; the film has 180 minutes) family saga tearjerker from Chinese Wang Xiaoshuai. Across four decades of turbulent Chinese society, Wang studies a married couple, using the death of their son as a focal point around which to subtly explore the single-child policy and the impact of the Cultural Revolution.

The unconventional structure zips back and forth through different time frames, gradually moving along a central timeline. The story occurs in episodes which each have the feel of their own short story, but which fill in the details of the other things we have seen. Wang leans heavily on dramatic irony, raising the tension as we wait for truths to emerge. One wonders if he couldn’t have found a way to cut 15 minutes or so from the run time, so languid are the first two hours. It isn’t until the final 50 minutes that So Long My Son really pays off every beat he’s set up. Like a Koreeda film, revelation is piled upon revelation, disarming you with one bombshell and then slapping you with another. Wang even uses the flashbacks to abet this by undercutting the outcome of one scene with the reality of the past or present.

The seriousness and the attention to naturalistic detail allows for slight detours into almost hallucinogenic images of memory. After the central couple go looking for their missing adopted son in a thunderstorm, they return to their flooded house and the family photograph floats towards them as though Baby Moses in the basket. When that boy is a little older we meet his punk, motorbike riding friends, who hang around the family house and appear like a mad apparition before the trash heap landscape. It’s a nod by Wang to the drifter youths he depicted in his earlier films.

Sometimes Wang takes the distance of a public spectacle. He rhymes shots by framing corridors in a particular way to remind you of a particular day in the lives of the characters, and repeatedly uses the Scottish poem Auld Lang Syne to haunting effect. Occasionally he’ll follow a peripheral character from this incredible ensemble cast and reveal their hidden depths. Then it ends with a note of blissfully ignorant hope, which recalls Make Way For Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937) in its graceful affection. This is challenging in its length and bleakness, and probably won’t find much of a cinema life in the UK, but it should, because So Long My Son is one of the most skilful and rewarding films of the competition, and a guaranteed tearjerker.

So Long My Son showed at the Berlinale in February, when this piece was originally written. It won both the Best Actors and Best Actress prizes. In cinemas Friday, December 6th. On VoD in April. On Mubi in July/August

For your lips only!!!

Posted on by victorfraga

From as far back as the Tower of Babel, humans have seen language as a divisive tool. Film has worked around language barriers since the days of black and white silent reels using subtitles, dubbing and elaborate body language. But if working around a foreign tongue is such a hassle, why bother?

In many ways, the intricacy and unique nature of language adds new layers of meaning and emotion that can’t be found through a simple translation. There are phrases that just don’t work in stilted translations (think John Kennedy’s iconic “ich bin ein Berliner” for starters, pictured below) and of course the limitations placed on casting those who can only speak the main language of the film can be incredibly detrimental to the realism and intersectionality of the cast.

It is also crucial to note that there is a power dynamic here that those in the cinema industry rarely discuss: the colonial hangover of portraying ethnic minorities as speaking in stilted, broken English or, worse, presented in yellow or blackface.

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Tongue twisters

When, as an actor, you perform your own cultural stories and your nation’s history in your first language, you can take command of what you are saying. You can speak in the rhythm and motion of your mother tongue, fully engage with the script in a way that works for you, and take back control over what you truly want to say about your country’s past, rather than parroting the words of a foreign screenwriter.

When you are working in a language that you don’t know very well, the consequences can be somewhat dire. There have been hilarious translations over the past – The Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) famously became “If you Leave me, I Delete You” in the Italian translation, and the translation for Twister (Jan De Bont, 1996) became “Run! Run! Cloudzilla!” in Chinese. And that’s just movie titles. The problem becomes far more complicated when you have to dub entire dialogues in a film. And even if you have got a really good translator on set, sometimes the poetic and personal nature of dialect and accent become lost when distributed abroad.

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Dubbing reinvented

But if I’m going to point out a problem, I might as well point towards a solution, or at least a film that has overcome these difficulties spectacularly well. That film is Air Strike (Xiao Feng, 2018; pictured above). Or The Bombing, if we are talking about the European title. Or Unbreakable Spirit in China. It stars Bruce Willis, Adrien Brody and many Chinese actors). The film tells the story of the Japanese bombing of Chongquing in WW2, a horrific campaign that is not widely known outside of China due to the Eurocentric focus on the conflict that the West tends to take. Using American, Chinese and Japanese characters, speaking their own languages, the film manages to transform a simple war movie into an intersectional marking point in cinematic history.

With over 55 speaking roles dubbed over a four-week period, followed by six weeks of sound mixing, the task of translating the film was a mammoth one. Talent is so often blurred by an unconvincing dub, but the film’s rythmo band dubbing technique allowed Chinese star Bingbing Fan (pictured below),to appear to Western audiences as she appears to Chinese speakers, every word delivered at the same pace and rhythm as her own voice.

The “band” is actually a clear 35 mm film leader on which the dialogue is hand-written, together with numerous additional indications for the actor – including laughs, cries, length of syllables, mouth sounds, breaths, and mouth openings and closings. The rythmo band is projected in the studio and scrolls in perfect synchronization with the picture. A little bit like a teleprompter. You can see an example here.

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Words tailored for your lips!

It’s fascinating to watch, and the success of Air Strike backs up how much it is transforming the industry. Sold to over 100 countries, the impressive dubbing was among the key factors that made it so attractive to distributive buyers. The rythmo band method allows words to be stretched, compressed or even changed to perfectly synchronise with lip movements on the screen, allowing the pace of the dialogue to flow more evenly.

But this wasn’t simply a feat of dubbing. In total, the cast and crew spoke four different languages, and working together proved to be an interesting challenge. The directors in China relied on body language and hand signals to ensure that the cast understood what was happening. You can listen to the cast and director talk through this experience here.

In a globalised world, the film industry is becoming bolder and braver with the stories we want to tell, the languages we use to tell them, and the people we cast and hire to work on them. Films like Air Strike show that we can overcome the stumbling blocks of translation and language barriers and create innovative, poignant work that challenges the borderlines of traditional storytelling.

The all-English dubbed version Air Strike (aka. The Bombing in the UK) was made available on all major VoD platforms on December 18th, after a number of controversies (including a tax evasion scandal) delayed its release. The film is considered one of the most expensive non-English language films ever made.

What if Snow White wasn’t white???

Posted on by victorfraga

Fairy tales have a mysterious sense of hidden meaning, covert messages, and lost faith and legends; a strange depth to them that no other genre of fiction carries. Symbolism of apples, resurrection and the power of women flow throughout these stories all over the world. One story, more than any other, continues to fascinate many of us: Snow White.

There have been over 30 versions of her across the history of film. All of these films have portrayed her as a slim, Caucasian beauty with a kind and passive personality. They include Disney’s 1937 iconic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (directed by David Hand, Larry Morey, Wilfrey Jackson, Ben Sharpsteen, William Cottrell and Perce Pearce; pictured directly above and below). But who was she based on? Where did the story come from? And how has film shaped the way we see her?

The original Snow White wasn’t some simpering maiden singing with birds over a well. She was a curvaceous beauty who enchanted the Emperor of China with her charm and charisma, battled her rivals in a cruel and often murderous court, and ultimately had to face her own vanity, leading to her downfall. So how did her image transform into the blushing, white-skinned Germanic maiden?

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In a faraway land…

The first Snow White can be found in a place you wouldn’t expect, 1,300 years ago in ancient Chengdu, a province of the Chinese Empire. Plucked from obscurity to marry royalty at the age of 13, and famous for her voluptuous figure and fondness for lychees, she nonetheless had her enemies at court. The rebel armies and rival courtesans all wanted rid of the elderly emperor’s favourite. He doted on her, employing 700 labourers to make her robes, presenting her with gold and jade worth millions.

All this attention created jealousy and anger, rumours stirring of corruption at the heart of her influence. Legend has it that the lychees themselves would be her undoing. She was found dead having eaten some, which were rumoured to have been poisoned. Others would insist she had been strangled by a rebel leader, but the truth has been lost in time. The lychee became the symbol of her downfall – and her decadence.

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An apple-to-lychee comparison!

Her body was wrapped in purple cloth – the Chinese colour for love – and buried without a coffin. The Emperor was distraught, and demanded her body be brought back to him to be buried in honour. When he was given her fragrance bag to remind him of her, he wept bitterly. He never truly recovered from his grief.

And so the story travelled down the Silk Road; the beautiful sleeping princess corrupted by poisonous fruit. On and on it travelled, down to the sea, across Italy and Germany. There it was mixed and met with other influences; the Christian elements of resurrection, the European apple replacing the lychee, and a glass coffin replacing the lilac fabric. Perhaps the dark colouring of her hair stuck, or myths of the whiteness of her skin passed down, for although she was reimagined in Europe as a Caucasian, she is the only fairy tale character with such striking physical traits.

Disney was the first film company to send her image reeling into popular imagination: yellow, blue and red becoming colours synonymous with her character. Like Lady Yang (pictured directly above and below, by Hanfugirl), Snow White is only 13 when she meets her ‘prince’, but the comparisons stop there. This story, along with the scores that would follow, were distinctly Germanic in feel: yodelling, European dress, kitsch cottages and a wicked witch replacing the archetypal evil stepmother.

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Return to the roots?

The other interpretations – most notably the live action retellings – are all based on this animation breakthrough. Every character since has followed the European version; a slim, white woman taking centre stage. As with so much of film as a genre, the biggest fish in the pond chooses the narrative. The white, Western world has laid claim to the tale and made it distinctly European in feel. Until now.

Snow White, it appears, is taking a trip back to her origins. While she won’t be appearing as Lady Yang – a story perhaps too adult for many young Snow White fans – the return is nonetheless interesting. In Snow White: Adventures In China (provisional title), the story will take place in the 19th Century, featuring a Chinese cast and following a tale of Snow White and her rivalry with an embittered sorceress. A story, perhaps unwittingly, eerily echoing the competition and rivalry faced by Lady Yung hundreds of years earlier.

Big Screen Entertainment Group (BSEG) is overseeing the project in conjunction with a Chinese production team, East and West mingling once again across the tale. As film is a genre which so often struggles with presenting an intersectional approach to storytelling and production, it will be intriguing to see how this plays out. Hopefully Snow White will be the first of many fairy tales being retold in their cultures of origins.

The new film is currently in development. The ball is definitely rolling, even if little information has been disclosed! The producers are both American and Chinese, and the actions will be shot in Louisiana (US) and China next year. BSEG are producing it alongside K7 and various Chinese investors. The project was first announced in 2015, and it is currently under production.

The film producer Kimberley Kates told DMovies: “I’m super excited about Snow White: Adventures in China: we’re into development and we are shooting next year. It’s wonderful to be retelling a story that is loved by children all over the world.”. The images in the picture gallery above are from the new production, copyright by BSEG.

Big Fish & Begonia (Dayu Haitang)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Around the age of 16, people in the spirit world must visit the world of the humans, with whom they are warned not to interact, as a rite of passage. Thus it is that teenage spirit girl Chun must pass through the elemental maelstrom linking her world and ours whereupon she is transformed into a red dolphin and made to spend seven days in the seas of the human world. On her sixth day, she hears a teenage boy play a dolphin-shaped flute to his sister; on her seventh she sees blue dolphins struggling in a fishing net. Her return to her world is blocked when she becomes entangled in a net between her and the whirlpool until the boy rescues her only to be himself fatally sucked into that whirlpool. This is more or less how the Chinese animation Big Fish & Begonia sets off.

Safely back in the spirit world, Chun understandably feels she owes him a debt so trades half her life to a soul keeper in exchange for that of the boy: she must nurture the boy’s soul which will be given the form of a fish in her world and release him back into the human world when the fish reaches adulthood, at which point she will die but he will live. She names the fish/boy Kun after a legendary sea creature of immense size.

There’s a lot more to it than that: firstly, an unrequited love story introduces teenage spirit boy Qiu who fancies Chun and looks out for her even though she treats him like no more than her big brother. Then, while the old aged male soul keeper watches over the souls of departed good people incarnated as fish, his equally old female counterpart watches over the souls of departed bad people incarnated as mice. Chun’s late grandma is reborn as a phoenix; her beloved grandpa, a Begonia tree. Also in the mix are a deadly two-headed snake, a mystical stone dragon and an unearthly ferryman who steers his barge along the clouds. And while in the human world the red dolphins swim among the seas, in the spirit world they soar through the skies along with cranes and dragons.

The whole is rendered in beautifully drawn animation as effective at portraying in the heroine’s internal life as it is in bringing incredible landscapes and fantastic creatures to the screen. The pace is mesmerisingly slow in places, breathtakingly action-packed in others. Where else can you see a girl sell half her life to save someone else’s, a man play mah-jong against three other versions of himself or the terrible portent of snow falling in the middle of Summer? For the finale, it throws in cataclysmic floods and waterspouts descending from the skies.

The production, which was intermittently on then off for some 13 years, was ultimately promoted by posts on Weibo (China’s answer to Twitter) then financed by China-based crowdfunding. Very much an indie production by two directors with a unique vision, it’s a landmark entry in the annals of fantasy film and animated storytelling which deserves to be widely seen. Its limited UK and Irish release means you’ll need to make a special effort to see it. You should do so though because this magnificent home-grown Chinese offering demonstrates just how tired and formulaic most Hollywood fantasy and/or animated films are. Don’t miss.

Oh, and be warned there’s a key scene buried in the middle of the end credits.

Big Fish & Begonia is out in the UK on Wednesday, April 18th. It is screening in both subtitled (independent cinemas) and dubbed (Showcase Cinemas) versions. We recommend the subtitled version as screened to press. Click here to see where it is being screened. Watch the film trailer below:

Subtitled:

Dubbed:

Old Beast

Posted on by victorfraga

Talk about a rebel without a cause, Lao Yang (Men Tu) pinches his children’s hospital donations meant for his wife’s surgeries. Understandably upset, his sons take him to sign a contract for all future expenditures, an action that turns violent from both parties. Angered, Lao Yang reports them to the police – but will his conscience allow for such a folly? Produced by established Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai (whose past directorial credits include Beijing Bicycle, 2001, Shanghai Dreams, 2005, and In Love We Trust, 2008), this is a movie that takes familial conflict to another level altogether in Ordos, the hometown of writer/director Ziyang Xhou, a city often described as a “modern ghost town” and a “failed utopia”.

Ziyang Xhou’s script is as thematically rich as one would expect for such a familial drama, as naturalistic and material imagery draw viewers to a China witnessed by three generations. Camels, cows, birds and cats all feature throughout, each encompassing the state Lao Yang finds himself in. He values love and money equally and the costs come at the price of the animals he wishes to sell.

Lao Yang is a difficult character to invest in. He gambles, he boozes, he serially cheats on his wife, even having the temerity to steal money from her while she’s comatose. It is to Men Tu’s credit as a craftsman that audience members are compelled to follow him throughout his few moments of heroic glory and many moments of pathetic grovelling. Foolish and selfish he may appear, it is clear Lao Yang merely intends to be a loving father and grandfather in a Chinese economy that has left him near destitute.

Despite the austerity of the synopsis, this script is often darkly comic, as our grunting lead bumps into an old farming friend, promising to mind his camel, only to sell it for beef prices. Cinematographer Mathias Dalvaux keeps the attention centred over compositions of widely emptied laneways and brick damaged apartments. Ordos is gritty, barren-looking, crime-ridden, banality-bidden and money-focused (quite literally, there are a number of close-ups that wade over bundles of notes throughout this film). Prettily filmed and morally ambiguous, this is a familial drama that keeps a good sense of pulse and purpose.

Old Beast is showing at the Glasgow Film Festival taking place right now!

Mountains May Depart

Posted on by victorfraga

It’s the late 1990s and a young woman is being courted by her boss and a local family friend. That’s where the comparisons with Richard Curtis (Bridget Jones Diary, Sharon Maguire, 2001) stop. Romance may well be at the centre of Jia Zhangke’s latest film. However, any comedic elements are of the bitterly ironic kind, as the director of 2013’s A Touch of Sin offers us a mostly convincing critique of three generations of Chinese globalism in his hometown Fenyang. The narrative set-up, thematic detail and Shanxi setting may sound familiar enough within Jia’s oeuvre. This time around, the director has opted to examine a more recent period and to focus on the pressures that globalism places on family ties.

The first third of Mountains May Depart is set in 1999, shortly after China’s mass-privatisation initiative and on the cusp of the country’s rapid economic explosion. We are introduced to Tao (Zhao Tao), a 25-year-old woman who works in a Fenyang petrol station and has a budding relationship with local coalbminer Liangzi (Liang Jingdong). We also meet Tao’s boss and fellow suitor Jingsheng (Zhang Yi), an entrepreneur who has capitalised on recent economic reforms and is building up a sizeable business portfolio. Although Tao and Liangzi have the clearest chemistry, some aggressively ostentatious manoeuvring from Jingsheng places him in prime position to become the groom. Liangzi leaves town, Jingsheng gets his marriage and Tao gives birth to a son, Daole.

By the time we meet Liangzi again in 2014, he’s moved east and found employment and a family in Handan. Unfortunately, his work in the mines has also taken its toll on his health. Liangzi moves back to Fenyang with his wife and child, ostensibly with the aim of finding solemn peace in his hometown. Liangzi’s return provides an opportunity to catch-up with Tao, now a divorcee whose estranged son lives in Shanghai with his father. A family tragedy necessitates a brief visit from youngster Daole (Rong Zishan), who is attending an international school and seems to inhabit the in-between space of a third culture.

We leave young Daole with the knowledge that Jingsheng is planning on moving to Australia. When we revisit him in 2025, he’s a college student in Melbourne and has taken on the anglicised nickname Dollar (Dong Zijian). The final third of the film is scripted almost entirely in English, as Dollar struggles to find purpose in his moneyed overseas existence. This manifests itself in Dollar’s cross-generational conflict with his father, as well as the ebb and flow of his alienated Chinese heritage and his pursuit of a relationship with an older Cantonese college teacher. In spite of its thematic importance, this is the weakest section of the film and is largely unaided by an awkwardly inauthentic script.

The breadth of Mountains May Depart is truly remarkable. Under the guidance of a less skillful director, the wide-reaching plot could become disconnected, yet Jia manages to tie three decades together with the tight, threatening thread of globalism. The film is populated by the imagery of an ongoing battle between tradition and modernity. This is best characterised by Liangzi and Jingsheng’s concurrent pursuit of Tao. Liangzi is a pious coal miner who feels most comfortable in simple rural clothing, whereas Jingsheng is a nouveau riche businessman who drives a German Volkswagen and wears tailored suits. Tao, a woman in the middle of these two disparate men, perhaps represents the Chinese motherland itself.

The minimal soundtrack of the film equally plays a part in conveying its deep-rooted symbolism. The repetition of Pet Shop Boys’ 1993 Go West situates the main characters in a transitional economy that aspires to beat to a Western rhythm. Yet with the privilege of hindsight, it is also a constant reminder of the unfulfilled promise of the synth-pop cover. Likewise, Taiwanese-Canadian Sally Yeh’s Cantopop ballad Take Care repeatedly suggests that the optimistic dream of globalism is possible. Exactly how is somewhat forgotten, as the protagonists continuously forget the identity of the singer.

Jingsheng’s global financial aspirations can be seen to reflect those of contemporary China. However, they come at the cost of an absolute immorality that sees him mercilessly dispose of a friend, strategically divorce a wife and reduce his son to the status of currency, with the nickname Dollar. While Liangzi’s tradition may represent a more morally pure way of life, it also seems to lead to an early death that can’t be prevented in such austere conditions. Tao’s China ultimately represents an unsolved paradox. If the pitfalls of tradition can only be solved by embracing the curing lure of capital, how can happiness be achieved?

Jia doesn’t provide the answer to this question and with a final act that falls somewhat short, so does the audience’s satisfaction. Nonetheless, Mountains May Depart is an excellent lesson in compelling melodrama and shines a pertinent light on the everyday experiences of China’s left-behind has-beens and morally corrupt have-it-alls.

Mountains May Depart is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, December 15th. On Arrow Player on Friday, April 9th (2021).

The Receptionist

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

This is both a Taiwanese production and a London one in terms of writer-director, cast and locations. The Receptionist is inspired by real life events that happened to someone director Jenny Lu knew. Fictionalised here as Anna (Shuang Teng, also one of the producers, whose performance is quite simply heartbreaking), that character has come to the UK seeking work to send money back to her debt-ridden family and turns up alone and out of her depth at a newly opened, suburban London, so-called massage parlour where a “body to body” is £60 a time. It’s run by hard-boiled Chinese Madam Lily (an astonishing turn by seasoned actress and singer Sophie Gopsill) whose briefly seen English landlady (Nicola Wright) has no idea Lily is anything other than an ordinary tenant.

When the dowdy Anna turns up trolley suitcase in town, Lily already has three women working there – Mei (the very watchable Amanda Fan) and Sasa (a multilayered performance from Tsai Ming-liang regular Chen Shiang-chyi) service the clients while Tina (Teresa Daley whose honest, matter-of-fact performance carries the film) works as receptionist. Mei is a happy-go-lucky type from Malaysia who seems to like dressing up, but don’t let the surface of her character fool you: this film is an honest attempt to portray the lives of sex workers in the UK, how they get into that line of employment and what keeps them there. The older Sasa is a single parent mum working to support her child.

Although the character of Anna was the script’s inspiration, story construction is built primarily around receptionist Tina from whose perspective we are shown the lives of these characters as they ply their trade within the confines of a small, anonymous London terrace.

Literature graduate Tina is living with her white English boyfriend Frank (Josh Whitehouse from Northern Soul, Elaine Constantine, 2014) and both of them are struggling to get work. There are just too many applicants chasing each job whether for architectural assistants (him) or anything in the book trade (her). Tina goes to an interview for a receptionist job and initially walks away when she discovers it’s a receptionist post for a brothel. But then, she needs the money. And the job pays. So she goes back and takes it. Just for a few days. At first.

One of the great strengths of the film particularly in its more focused first half, while purporting to document the plight of East Asian ethnic minorities in the UK (which it does admirably), is that it manages in passing to succinctly express the situation in which Generation Rent currently finds itself – lumbered with student loans to service, unable to find a job, lacking sufficient money to buy a home – which suggests that its audience may be far, far wider than the East Asian demographic at which it seems at first glance to be aimed. Those tensions are never far away and go some way to explain why these women have fallen into the sex industry.

The occupants of the house must interact with their mostly English-speaking clients, so scenes between the women are in Mandarin while others are in English. We watch them cooking, relaxing and working with clients. Both director and actresses appear as fluent in English as in the other languages, giving a real sense of a an immigrant community within the wider, English-speaking London. The clients are a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant, the latter giving rise to some fairly harrowing scenes. Towards the end, perhaps in an attempt at narrative closure, there’s the inevitable police raid.

This first feature gets an awful lot right and makes some important comments about Britain today and the way it (mis)treats both outsiders and its very own younger generation. It’s perhaps noteworthy that it’s taken an outsider to make this film in Britain: nevertheless it’s bang on target and deserves to be shown to a wider, mainstream UK audience.

The Receptionist played London East Asian Film Festival in 2017, when this piece was originally written. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, July 20th.