March 1, 2009
February 18, 2014
Beijing Love Story (Variety review)
Beijing Love Story
FEBRUARY 16, 2014
This romantic-comedy roundelay gets better as it gradually moves away from comedy toward more sentimental material.
Dennis Harvey
Taking a rather blatant page from the Richard Curtis playbook of romantic-comedy roundelays, “Beijing Love Story” serves up a chocolate box of disparate narrative sweets, offered in episodic rather than interwoven form. This first feature for writer-director Chen Sicheng (also a member of the ensemble cast) spins off his 2012 Chinese TV series of the same name, albeit sans any returning characters or story threads. Pleasant results manage a trick rather infrequent for this genre, in that the pic actually gets better as it gradually moves away from comedy toward more sentimental material. Launched on Valentine’s Day (natch) in various markets, including nine North American screens, the film set a single-day record for a 2D film in China with $16.1 million, and is sure to generate sequels and imitations.
Running heedlessly toward the requisite “girl of his dreams” in traffic, young architect Chen Feng (helmer Chen) is promptly creamed by a passing bus. Reflecting that he never imagined his story would end this way as he flies through the air, he recalls the fateful night he met Shen Yan (Tong Liya) at a friend’s bachelor party. It’s love at first sight, and surprisingly — especially given that he’s initially very drunk and vomits endlessly — she feels likewise. The problem is that he has no assets, and her parents would much prefer she marry a rich suitor already waiting in the wings.
Chen’s boss, Wu Zheng (Wang Xuebing), merrily brags that over a decade of marriage, he’s cheated nonstop on his wife, Zhang Lei (Yu Nan). However, when she finally figures out what he’s really up to during his nightly “business dinners,” that achievement suddenly doesn’t seem so funny anymore. Her attempts at revenge infidelity don’t go so well, including with her own boss (Tony Leung Ka-fai), who soon jets off for a sinfully glamorous (and expensive) Greek seaside rendezvous with what appears to be his longtime mistress (Carina Lau). But it turns out they’re just role playing in an attempt to jazz up a more conventional relationship.
They’ve come a long, jaded way from home, where their innocent teenage daughter (cellist Nana Ou-yang) is forbidden to enter a TV talent contest with the other members of her string quartet. The boy (Liu Haoran) who has a crush on her — and who can also literally see people’s “auras” — decides to make that dream come true nonetheless. On the opposite end of the age scale, the boy’s grandfather, Old Wang (Wang Qingxiang), is enduring the strenuous efforts of Mrs. Gao’s (Siqin Gaowa) to hook him up with a suitable older lady; he’s unimpressed until she arranges a blind date with an attractive divorcee who has just returned after two decades in America.
Pic moves from initially raunchy comedy through spy-movie parody, sex farce, disarmingly wide-eyed adolescent love and finally bittersweet melodrama, never entirely forsaking humor or an earnest belief in romantic love despite all the surface shifts. While there’s no great originality on display here, “Beijing Love Story” handles its full range of stylistic and tonal gambits with impressive assurance. A strong performance or a well-placed sober moment always brings things back to terra firma whenever they turn a bit over-the-top.
Flashiest in its first reel, especially editorially, the widescreen feature maintains a refreshing attention to composition, color and camera movement in a genre that too often dispenses with visual finesse in favor of TV-style functionality. All tech contributions are high-grade.
Film Review: ‘Beijing Love Story’
Reviewed online, San Francisco, Feb. 13, 2014. Running time: 122 MIN.
Production
(China) A China Lion Film Distribution (in U.S.) release of a Wanda Media and Shine Asia Media Co. presentation. Produced by Jerry Ye, Xia Chen’an, Gillian Zhao. Executive producers, Abe Kwong, Cary Cheng, Li Yaping. Co-producers, Albert Yeung, Li Yaping, Mani Fox, Kevin Zheng, Xia Hua, Hou Guangming, Zhao Zhi, Felix Liu, Howard Chen, Yuan Xiaomu, Yu Jianhong, Penny Jang, Wu Bin, Abby Zhang.
Crew
Directed, written by Chen Sicheng. Camera (color, widescreen, HD), Song Xiaofei; editor, Tu Yiran; music, Dong Dongdong; production designer, William Chang; sound, Gary Chen; re-recording mixers, Joe Huang, Terry Tu; assistant director, Chan Po Chan; casting, Lu Yeng.
With
Tony Leung Ka-fai, Carina Lau, Wang Xuebing, Yu Nan, Wang Qingxiang, Chen S’tchingowa, Chen Sicheng, Tong Liya, Elaine Jin, Geng Le, Guo Jingfei, Nana Ou-yang, Liu Haoran, Siqin Gaowa. (Mandarin dialogue)
Variety
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February 16, 2014
Ice Poison (Hollywood Reporter review)
Ice Poison
2/15/2014 by Elizabeth Kerr
The Bottom Line
Another deliberately paced but largely engaging portrait of the grim economic and social realities of modern Burma.
Burmese director Midi Z’s latest proves the third time is lucky by turning in his strongest feature yet.
With just a few features under his belt, Burmese-Taiwanese filmmaker Midi Z has developed a signature style for his intimate portraits of modern Burmese life. Following Poor Folk and Return to Burma, the director’s latest is a similar look at the poverty, drug abuse and aimlessness that plague his homeland. Ice Poison shows a marked maturation of Midi Z as a filmmaker, and though he still lets his hallmark long shots get the better of the material from time to time, the film is his strongest to date. Festivals that showed interest in his earlier features are sure to repeat that interest here, and limited art house release, particularly in Asia, isn’t completely out of the question.
Set in a small town best known for its opium crop, the story such as it is begins with an anonymous young vegetable farmer (Wang Shin-Hong) and his father (Zhou Cai Chang) discussing the state of the agricultural trade they’ve relied on their whole lives. With industrial farming bearing down on them and making it increasingly difficult to make a living, they discuss some of their options for the coming season. It’s a typical Midi Z segment, with a still camera and naturalistic performances as the two men talk about seeking help from friends and family in the city.
Not much comes of that, as everyone father and son speak to decry the rules, regulations and government/business decrees that are coming into effect — and in many ways destroying farmers and average workers’ livelihoods. Their last hope is Uncle Wang (Li Shang Da), who takes the father’s prized cow as down payment for a motorbike that the son — now officially the Driver — can use as a taxi. If no more money is forthcoming, the cow will be sold to the slaughterhouse.
To this point Ice Poison is a measured (some would say slow), carefully composed and somewhat rambling narrative that deftly illustrates this side of Burma right now. Details are dropped into meandering conversations that unfold within Midi Z’s observational approach. The film really starts to take shape when the Driver finally picks up a fare: Sanmei (Midi Z regular Wu Ke-Xi), a local woman living in China back in town to bury her grandfather. Like many Burmese, Sanmei left for greener pastures, but is desperate to find a way to get her son and stay so as to get out of her arranged marriage to an older Chinese man. Though hardly an unexpected turn, Sanmei ropes the Driver into helping her out as a courier for her cousin, who deals a meth-like drug called ice and who is too closely scrutinized to do his own dirty work.
One of Ice Poison’s greatest strengths is its dispassionate tone; Midi Z’s screenplay never condemns or condones the driver and Sanmei’s decisions, and the casual acceptance of options like smuggling are all the more tragic and infuriating for it. Seemingly throwaway scenes — like one where Sanmei’s mother tells her she should consider herself fortunate to have a husband that doesn’t beat her — gracefully crystallize the state of life in Burma; that Sanmei and the driver choose to get wasted on the product they peddle is no surprise. Wu and Wang are both wholly believable as young people frustrated with what they see as a lack of a future, and balance despair and resigned action to a perfect pitch. Though cinematographer Fan Sheng Siang’s camerawork is rich and fluid, more than a few segments belabor their point, and the necessity of the final closing shot is debatable, ultimately Ice Poison demonstrates a heretofore unseen, and welcome, level of accessibility to Midi Z.
Producer: Midi Z
Director: Midi Z
Cast: Wu Ke-Xi, Wang Shin-Hong, Zhou Cai Chang, Li Shang Da, Tang Shu Lan
Screenwriter: Midi Z
Executive producer: Patrick Mao Huang
Director of Photography: Fan Sheng Siang
Production Designer: Zhao Zhi-Tang
Music: Sonic Dead Horse
Costume designer: Dan Ka Ming Lwin
Editor: Lin Sheng Wen, Midi Z
THR
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Sweet Alibis (Hollywood Reporter review)
Sweet Alibis
2/15/2014 by Elizabeth Kerr
The Bottom Line
A standard action comedy that’s an diverting mixed bag at best.
Lien Yi-chi’s second feature marks a rare foray into genre entertainment from Taiwan.
A chocolate eating dog, a protective police chief, a movie star’s felonious twin brother and Taiwan’s answer to Walter White are just a few of the moving parts bouncing around in Sweet Alibis, a rare piece of unapologetic genre entertainment from Taiwan, better known for angsty teens, sentimental melodrama and moody art house fare. The second feature by burgeoning populist Lien Yi-chi (the middling 2011 thriller Make Up) is a high-energy romp that doesn’t pretend to be anything that it’s not, and hits its targets as often as it misses by a mile.
The film’s gregarious comic book tone is set right from the opening credits (which play something like an ’80s action television series), which is also when the Shaft-lite soundtrack starts. A vaguely stereotyped transgender character and a movie theater shooting scene could prove problematic in some markets, but Sweet Alibis could easily find a life in Asia where the humor will likely land better. And though it’s too commercial for most festivals Asian interest programs may want to take a look.
The needlessly convoluted plot begins with new partners Chih-yi (Alex Su) and Yi-ping (Ariel Lin) working on a poodle homicide (really, it’s part of a bigger case). Chih-yi is a bad, as in not good at his job, cop more interested in dating services than policing, and is known for never putting himself in harm’s way. Yi-ping is the ultra-keen chief’s daughter, who can’t wait to draw her gun and is desperate to prove her policing chops outside the shadow of her dad. Their boss Long partners Chih-yi with Yi-ping to keep her safe, but to absolutely no one’s surprise, the duo stumble deeper into a major drug case involving meth dealer Snack (Matt Wu), Chih-yi’s love struck nephew Johnny, a group of gay gangsters (one of whom transition from male to female to preserve the gang’s criminal “face”) the aforementioned poodle and a remarkable cancer recovery. Cue comic high jinks.
Sweet Alibisis the kind of throwaway amusement that’s rare for Taiwan, and though the toilet humor abounds (the chief has an intestinal problem, which is a recurring, er, joke) it does have its share of genuinely witty moments. Yi-ping’s gun fixation earns a few chuckles and when Snack’s actor brother Matt Wu (Wu cheekily playing himself) gets roped into a sting operation, his distress at crowds being unable to see his perp walk “performance” proves to be a highlight. Sweet Alibis is juvenile in flashes, grossly sentimental in others, boasts one moment that is simply bizarre (a musical interlude that doesn’t work as spoof, satire or tragedy) and its lead actors are only partially engaging. It takes far too long for Su to give Chih-yi a personality trait aside from idiot (granted a script flaw) and Lin is saddled with the “feisty but vulnerable girl” role in Yi-ping. It’s the supporting cast that give the mostly unnamed secondary characters the zing that move the film from the level of forgettable nonsense to enjoyably forgettable nonsense.
Producer: Jackie Wang
Director: Lien Yi-chi
Cast: Alec Su, Ariel Lin, Matt Wu, Lei Hong, Lang Tzu-yun
Screenwriter: Yu Shang-min, Chen Jia-jhen, Lien Yi-chi
Executive producer: Lin Tien-kuei, Yin Hsiao-jung, Alex Wong, Charles Hu
Director of photography: Randy Che
Production designer: YC Kuo
Music: Yang Wan-chien
Costume designer: Emma Lin
Editor: Wenders Li, Ian Lin
No rating, 113 minutes
THR
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February 14, 2014
No Man’s Land (Screen Daily review)
No Man’s Land
13 February, 2014
By Jonathan Romney
Dir: Ning Hao. China. 2013. 117mins
Widescreen sepia deserts, lashings of Spanish guitar and highway mayhem a go-go - Chinese actioner No Man’s Land (Wu Ren Qu) milks them for all they’re worth, and more so. This boisterous entertainment by Ning Hao - director of Crazy Stone and Mongolian Ping-Pong - is in a vein of pastiche updated spaghetti Western action that you might call ‘phoney Leone’. In the US, the vein has been milked variously by the likes of John Dahl, Oliver Stone and the Coens, and Ning gives the sub-genre a boisterous spin of his own, although the knockabout violence and escape-from-peril twists pile up to eventually numbing effect.
But it’s all very slickly executed, if impersonal, with much wham-bam road content. In Chinese markets, the film - completed in 2009 and released belatedly, reportedly because of censorship issues over its representation of police - made over $20 million in its first week of Chinese release in December. The film should export healthily, and play in festival cult slots - essentially, find a home wherever there’s a fanboy following for post-Tarantino genre-twisting fun.
The setting is in the vast, arid expanses of the Gobi Desert, which a Tex-Mex flavoured score gives that old Western borderline feel. The action begins with the arrest of a falcon rustler (Huang Bo) and a car crash caused by his leather-jacketed, dagger-toting boss (a memorably scowling, Van Cleef-like Duo Bujie). Self-serving city slicker attorney Pan Xiao (Xu Zheng) breezes into town and uses his cynical wiles to get the Boss acquitted of murder, then leaves with a sleek red car as his down payment. But once he comically manages to alienate the entire vicinity’s raggle-taggle population, it becomes clear that he won’t be seeing the big city again in a hurry.
Trying to manage his escape, with some caged falcons, a pile of loot and an apparently dead body (although stiffs have a way of resuscitating quickly here) Pan Xiao ends up with no allies except a roadside hooker (Yu Nan) - although her main role is the traditional one of screaming a lot and getting bound and gagged by whichever heavy wanders along next.
Engagingly cast with assorted character plug-uglies giving their all, the film goes gangbusters at the start, but once it hits the desert roads, the action really has nowhere much to go. More cars crash, more guns are fired, more (increasingly brutal) blows come Pan Xiao’s way, more mariachi trumpet blares on the soundtrack. Intermittently, the hero offers ponderous voice-over theories about man, monkeys and the dog-eat-dog world. The relentless cynical tone is hardly leavened by a bathetically soppy coda. But splashes of black humour and the occasional authentically knockout action moment at least make it hard to dislike the film - or to lose interest for too long. The caged wild birds don’t seem to have too happy a ride, though.
Production companies: China Film Group, Injo Films
International sales: China Film Company, katerina.warren@gmail.com
Producers: Sanping Han, Haicheng Zhao
Screenplay: Ning Hao, Shu Ping, Xing Aina
Cinematography: Du Jie
Production designer: Hao Yi
Editor: Cheung Yuan
Music: Nathan Wang
Main cast: Xu Zheng, Yu Nan, Huang Bo, Duo Bujie
ScreenDaily
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Beijing Love Story (Hollywood Reporter review)
Beijing Love Story
2/13/2014 by Frank Scheck
The Bottom Line
Chinese audiences will flock to this moving if awkwardly rendered portrait of multi-generational romance.
This spin-off of the hugely popular Chinese television series presents a complex series of intertwined love stories.
Demonstrating that sappiness recognizes no international borders, Beijing Love Story belies its title by presenting a series of intertwined love stories taking place in that capital city. A spin-off of the hugely popular 2012 Chinese television series of the same name, this directorial debut by Chen Sicheng is too diffuse and understated to achieve crossover success. But Chinese moviegoers both home and abroad will likely flock to the film which is receiving a day-and-date release with the Mainland, appropriately on Valentine’s Day.
The filmmaker also plays a leading role in the first segment, portraying Feng, an impoverished young man who quickly falls in love, impregnates and proposes to a beautiful young woman (Tony Liya) from an affluent family. But the relationship doesn’t sit well with the woman’s status-obsessed mother or her still-besotted ex-boyfriend who both do their best to derail the couple’s happiness.
Other intertwined segments involve Feng’s married best friend (Wang Xuebing) whose wife (Yu Nan) discovers his rampant infidelity and becomes determined to get revenge in kind; a high school student (Liu Haoran) who finds himself besotted with a young cello prodigy (Nana Ou Yang) because of her “aura,” only to be crushed when she leaves him to go to England and attend a private school; the girl’s father (Tony Leung Ka Fai), who heads to Greece to reunite with his longtime mistress (Carina Lau), with the assignation spoiled by his angry discovery that she’s had plastic surgery; and the boy’s grandfather (Wang Qinxiang), who’s set up on a series of disastrous blind dates by his cousin matchmaker (Siqin Gaowa). When he finally meets a woman who seems suitable, his happiness becomes short-lived when a tragic secret is revealed.
The tyro director/screenwriter, clearly influenced by American movies ranging from Love, Actually to Titanic — the latter is referred to several times — is not fully successful in tying together the multiple storylines in coherent fashion, with the occasional doses of magical realism injected into the proceedings feeling particularly strained. Ultimately, the film’s attempt at blending humor, poignancy and melodrama results in an awkward mish-mosh. But it has heart to spare, and the performances by the multi-generational ensemble are very effective, with particularly moving work by the veterans in the cast.
Opens: Friday, Feb. 14 (China Lion Film)
Production: Wanda Media Company, Shine Entertainment Media Company
Cast: Tony Leung ka Fai, Wang Xuebing, Siqin Gaowa, Carina Lau, Tong Liya, Jin Yanling, Yu Nan, Wang Qinxiang, Chen Sicheng
Director/screenwriter: Chen Sicheng
Producer: Li Chen
Not rated, 122 min.
THR
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February 12, 2014
The Rice Bomber (Variety review)
The Rice Bomber
FEBRUARY 11, 2014
Maggie Lee
An intrinsically fascinating true story of a Taiwanese ecological activist prevails over director Cho Li’s dry but well-meaning narrative approach.
Like wet dynamite, “The Rice Bomber” has trouble achieving the desired explosive momentum with its potentially incendiary history of Taiwan’s downtrodden farmers. Recounting the early life of ecological activist Yang Rumen, who went to jail for 17 bombing incidents staged to draw public attention to unfair agrarian policies, helmer Cho Li’s well-meaning attempt to provide a comprehensive picture results in a preachy first hour and a dearth of cinematic visuals. Fortunately for audiences, the intrinsically fascinating material on Yang trumps the dry narrative style, and he emerges as an extraordinary figure — romantic but eccentric, desperate yet driven. The film’s socially conscious message will find sympathy among indie fests and on educational channels.
The film is based on Yang’s book “White Rice Is Not a Bomb,” and the narrative is up to its ears in voiceover, quoting wordy excerpts of his ideals and philosophies. It also assumes considerable knowledge on the audience’s part about Taiwan politics, both regional and international, as evidenced by a bomb detonation in the opening scene for which no context is provided until more than an hour into the film.
Yang’s story proper starts in 1988, when he and mentally challenged brother Cai are just unruly tykes being raised in Erlin Town, Changhua County, by their peasant grandparents; already farmers are clashing with the government over produce prices. A quick jump forward in time sees Yang (Huang Chien-wei) fulfilling his military service, revealing his rebellious nature when he’s hazed by other cadets and impetuously retaliates.
In 2001, Yang is discharged and returns to Changhua, where the government is buying up farmland and building factories. Persuaded by his grandparents to give up their ancestral vocation, the young idler re-encounters a childhood friend, known only as “Troublemaker” (Nikki Hsieh), and they embark on a long, bumpy romance. The daughter of shifty legislator Hong Jung (Hsu Chia-jung), she calls herself a revolutionary and flirts with suicide while living off Daddy’s deep pockets. Yang, on the other hand, ekes out a living as a seaside fruit vendor. The film could have made more of their class differences, though a more glaring flaw is that it takes ages for them to develop any basic chemistry.
There follows a combination of factors, public and personal, that cause Yang’s social indignation to escalate, including his friendship with a teenager (Yang Peng-yu) abandoned by parents and society; Taiwan’s entry into the WTO, opening the floodgates for imported produce; and the gradual proliferation of factories, leading to fatal accidents. Cho’s documentary-like technique and reliance on expository news footage reflects a certain high-mindedness and avoidance of sensationalism, but it also squanders the picture’s dramatic potential.
The turning point in Yang’s life arrives more than an hour into the film, when he starts planting DIY bombs made with field ingredients in public places, accompanied by a protest message. Although re-creating so many of his protest antics doesn’t help advance the plot, his methods are so eccentric and audacious that they’re a delight to watch, and finally it becomes clear that every struggle or endeavor in his adult life has been building toward this mission.
Veteran thesp and acting instructor Huang (“Yang Yang”) limns Yang’s shifting moods and intellectual growth with intuitive directness. Hsieh (“Makeup,” “Honey Pu Pu”) doesn’t get enough room to expand on a character who’s not particularly likable or sharply defined; only the scenes of ideological clash between her and her father allow her to express her fiery nature.
Cho, who has longtime experience as a producer, ensures that craft contributions are all solid. Korean lenser Cho Yong-kyo delivers some breathtaking compositions of rice fields and wetlands, and a melodious score by Iranian composer Peyman Yazdanian (“The Wind Will Carry Us,” “Summer Palace,” “Buddha Mountain”) adds warmth and emotional heft to even the flatter scenes.
Berlin Film Review: ‘The Rice Bomber’
Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Panorama), Feb. 6, 2013. Running time: 117 MIN. Original title: “Baimi zhadan ke”
Production
(Taiwan) A Warner Bros. release of a 1 Prod. Film Co., Taipei Postproduction, Arrow Cinema Group, Ocean Deep Films presentation of an Ocean Deep Films production. (International sales: Ablaze Image, Taipei.) Produced by Li Lieh, Yeh Ju-fen.
Crew
Directed by Cho Li. Screenplay, Hung Hung, Zin Do-lan based on the book “White Rice Is Not a Bomb” by Yang Rumen. Camera (color, widescreen, HD), Cho Yong-kyou; editors, Qin Mai-song, Liao Ching-sung; music, Peyman Yazdanian; production designer, Lee Tian-yue; set decorator, Chen Yi-ching; costume designer, Wei Hsiang-jung; sound (Dolby Digital), Sunit Asvinkul, Frank Cheng; supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, Frank Cheng; visual effects supervisor, Linus Cheng; visual effects, Taipei Postproduction; associate producer, Lin Hsiao-ching; assistant director, Lu Keng-hsien; second unit camera, Pei Ji-wei; casting, Shirley Chen.
With
Huang Chien-wei, Nikki Hsieh, Michael Chang, Hsu Chia-jung, Yang Peng-yu. (Mandarin, Taiwanese dialogue)
Variety
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Blind Massage (Variety review)
Blind Massage
FEBRUARY 10, 2014
Maggie Lee
This tactful drama about sight-impaired masseurs and masseuses is one of Lou Ye’s more absorbing films in recent memory.
Non-conformist Chinese auteur Lou Ye has always trained his sensuous gaze on outsiders, and in “Blind Massage,” he explores the fringe existence of sight-impaired masseurs and masseuses from an unsentimental distance. Demystifying their specialized profession and evoking their arduous search for love and stability, Lou’s detachment — often an artsy pose in his other films — has a kind of tactfulness here that allows these absorbing stories to speak for themselves. The helmer’s second feature made with the Chinese film bureau’s official approval, this French-Chinese co-production is no more mainstream than his previous work. Likely to enjoy critical buzz but lukewarm domestic B.O., it will nonetheless find its way into his usual festivals and European arthouses.
At the Sha Zongqi Massage Center in Nanjing, fully and partially blind employees enjoy an oasis outside what they call “mainstream society.” Run on a slick management model by blind partners Zhang Zongqi (Wang Zhihua) and Sha Fuming (Qin Hao), the masseurs are respectfully called “doctors” and attain dignity through their skill and self-sufficiency. While Zongqi is a man of few words, Fuming is an outgoing charmer whose hobbies including writing poetry and visiting dance halls for the retired.
Into this close-knit community comes Sha’s old classmate Dr. Wang (Guo Xiaodong), broke from stock losses in Shenzhen, and eloping with his young, foxy, partially sighted g.f. Kong (Zhang Lei). Then comes proud, self-contained Du Hong (Mei Ting, perfectly poised), who regards her clients’ daily flattery on her beauty a nuisance, and who is doggedly courted by Fuming; she rejects him, dismissing his professed love as “an obsession with a concept,” since he cannot grasp what physical beauty is. Another young masseur is handsome lad Xiao Ma (Huang Xuan), whose hormones are racing and who becomes infatuated with Kong. His heart remains set on her even after his pal Yiguang (Mu Huaipeng) initiates him into the pleasures of Nanjing’s red-light district, where he and sassy sex worker Mann (Wang Lu) find casual emotional refuge in each other.
Bi Feiyu’s source novel (adapted by Ma Yingli) has been lauded for avoiding the inspirational/patronizing tone of most mainland literature on the disabled, and Lou shows similar integrity by conveying the experience of living in the dark from his subjects’ perspective. With his signature fluid and intimate film language, he captures the touchy-feely way in which protags interact among themselves, and honestly acknowledges their sexual desires and deprivations.
Adopting a clean and simple storyline that focuses on ensemble acting rather than on the narrative riddles and knotty reversals that have defined his oeuvre, Lou delves into each protag’s emotional world with a documentary-like observational style that is nonetheless entirely engrossing. Gradually their individual hangups surface, revealing the unspoken wounds of social discrimination — as when Fuming goes on (of all things) a blind date, taking a risk that only reinforces the futility of his hopes of becoming integrated into society, or when Wang vents his own self-loathing and injured pride in a shockingly gory confrontation with debt collectors. Other than a somewhat manufactured and overwrought twist in the third act, the film wraps on a gently forlorn that captures the randomness and mutability of life.
The professional actors, many of them Lou regulars, mingle comfortably with their sight-impaired amateur counterparts. Of the latter group, Zhang gives a knockout perf as the coquettish Kong; fearlessly voluptuous in sex scenes that might make professional actresses blush, she is a radiant presence, even in the rare moments when she’s subdued by sadness or insecurity. The film also marks a significant breakthrough for Qin, proving that his range extends beyond the morose roles he played in Lou’s “Spring Fever” and “Mystery.” Although he’s obviously spent considerable time mastering the body language and facial expressions of the blind, he goes beyond that to express the frustration and loneliness beneath Fuming’s man-of-the-world facade and upbeat demeanor.
Limning a different brand of disaffection from Qin’s, Guo draws on the simmering rage he’s evinced past roles to convey Wang’s uphill struggle as he tries to make a comeback in life. Looking careworn even when he should be finding comfort in Kong’s passionate embrace, Guo imbues his climactic outburst with reverberant power.
Lou’s fondness for shakily handheld, artfully opaque cinematography (notably in “Purple Butterfly” and “Spring Fever”) finds a less pretentious channel in lenser Zeng Jian’s highly tactile re-creation of the characters’ impaired vision, conveyed through blurry image textures, spatially distorted closeups, lurching camera movements and off-kilter angles; by contrast, the sound design, although fine, could have more inventively reflected the protags’ hypersensitive hearing. Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson (“Prisoners”), who collaborated with Lou on “Mystery,” contributes an ambient, minimalist score that effectively builds to an elegiac melody, incorporating classical Chinese flute music toward the end. Other craft contributions are stylish; the muggy, misty ambience of Nanjing, shot here in constant torrential rain, fuels the downcast mood.
Berlin Film Review: ‘Blind Massage’
Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (competing), Feb. 11, 2014. Running time: 117 MIN. Original title: “Tui na”
Production
(China-France) A Shaanxi Culture Industry, Yinhai, Dream Factory, Les Films du Lendemain presentation of a Shaanxi Culture Industry, Les Films du Lendemain production, in association with Zhu Hongbo, Cui Yujie. (International sales: Wild Bunch, Paris.) Produced by Wang Yong. Executive producers, Lou Ye, Nai An, Li Ling, Kristina Larsen. Co-executive producers, Lou Ye, Nai An, Kristina Larsen.
Crew
Directed by Lou Ye. Screenplay, Ma Yingli, based on the novel “Tui na” by Bi Feiyu. Camera (color, HD), Zeng Jian; editors, Kong Jinlei, Zhu Lin; music, Johann Johannsson; production designer, Du Ailin; costume designer, Zhang Dingmu; sound (Dolby Digital), Fu Kang; visual effects supervisor, Liu Song; visual effects, Imade Forest; assistant director, Lu Ying; casting, Zhang Rong.
With
Qin Hao, Guo Xiaodong, Huang Xuan, Zhang Lei, Mei Ting, Huang Lu, Jiang Dan, Huang Junjun, Mu Huaipeng, Wang Zhihua, Wang Lu. (Mandarin dialogue)
Variety
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