Night Peacock

夜孔雀

China/France, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 84 mins.

Director: Dai Sijie 戴思杰.

Rating: 3/10.

The same exotic, pretentious mixture from France-based film-maker Dai Sijie, with a cardboard cast.

STORY

Paris, the present day. Elsa (Liu Yifei) is a Chinese flautist who is a French citizen. (Several months ago, while a guest flautist with a music group in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China, she had met Ma Rong [Li Ming] who worked at a silkworm factory, where he played elegies on his traditional flute for all the silkworms that have to die to produce cocoons for industrial use.) In Paris she contacts his younger brother, Ma Jianmin (Liu Ye), a professional tatooist who has stayed on in the country after splitting up with a French woman. She asks him to tattoo a silkworm larva on her ankle. In her flat she keeps the larva of a Night Peacock moth. (In Chengdu, Elsa had asked Ma Rong to teach her to play the shakuhachi 尺八, a Japanese bamboo flute she’d had made from pictures, but he had refused.) Ma Jianmin says he would like to tattoo a Night Peacock moth on Elsa’s back, as her skin is so perfect. (In Chengdu she had read about the ailanthus tree, on which the larva of the Night Peacock moth feeds. Silkworms who eat it do not have to die to produce a silk cocoon. When he heard, Ma Rong was impressed, and they went looking for ailanthus trees together.) Elsa discovers she is eight weeks pregnant, and has a month to decide whether to keep the baby or not. (In Chengdu, Xiaolin (Yu Shaoqun), a Sichuan Opera student who specialised in female roles, had spotted Elsa in a swimming pool and followed her back to the international student dormitory where she was staying. He was fascinated by her shoes, and later they got to know each other.) In a Paris cemetary Elsa and Ma Jianmin find an ailanthus tree so she can feed her Night Peacock larva. (In Chengdu she and Ma Rong had also found an ailanthus tree, and afterwards made love. For some reason, however, he didn’t want her to meet his grown son.) Then in Paris, suddenly, Ma Jianmin is arrested for overstaying his visa, and the clock is ticking for Elsa to decide whether or not to have an abortion.

REVIEW

Dai Sijie 戴思杰, 62, an author-cum-filmmaker who’s been based in France since 1984, has carved a whole career in the West from his experiences during the Cultural Revolution (China, My Sorrow 牛棚, 1989, shot in southern France; The Little Chinese Seamstress 小裁缝, 2002, shot in China), as well as with the theme of forbidden love (The Chinese Botanist’s Daughters Les filles du botaniste, 2006, a lesbian melodrama shot in Vietnam). A writer first (of the exotic type beloved by French intellectuals) and filmmaker second (his movies have a literary rather than cinematic feel), he’s made a new film every four to five years, so the nine-year gap between Night Peacock 夜孔雀 and his last opus (Botanist) is way beyond average. It would be nice to report that this first movie set (partly) in his native city of Chengdu, Sichuan province, has been worth the wait, but unfortunately it’s the same mix as usual: aggressively cultural visuals, cardboard characters, western-tailoured exoticism, and fetishistic obsessions (here: feet, shoes, tattoes and flutes).

Dai’s film-making style, which started clunkily with China, My Sorrow, has slowly become more fluid over the years and, in Seamstress and Botanist, had a visual appeal that helped compensate for the awkward, uninvolving scripts (co-written with Nadine Perront) in which characterisation took second place to literary flourishes. Thanks to Iranian Canadian d.p. Saba Mazloum (who’s been a camera operator on several Mainland films, like My Own Swordsman 武林外传, 2011, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 龙门飞甲, 2011, and One Night Surprise 一夜惊善, 2013), Night Peacock oozes atmosphere, from musty Chengdu to musty Paris; the music by Dou Peng 窦鹏 is fairly standard for a romantic melodrama; and the editing by Hong Kong’s Li Dongquan 李栋全 [Wenders Li] is, at 84 minutes, blessedly tight. But the story, yoyo-ing between Paris and Chengdu, and centred on a Chinese French flautist who’s obsessed with silkworms and the larva of the spectacular Night Peacock moth, is risibly pretentious, in a particular Gallic way.

Dai has coralled a name cast that, as in Seamstress and Botanist, is partly diverting by its sheer presence: Li Ming 黎明 [Leon Lai] as a traditional flautist in Chengdu, Liu Ye 刘烨 as his tattoist younger brother in Paris, Yu Shaoqun 余少群 (as in Forever Enthralled 梅兰芳, 2008) playing a fey opera performer, and the winsome Liu Yifei 刘亦菲 as the woman between them all. All hit their marks professionally and, apart from Liu, look as if they don’t believe a word of the script. It’s the kind of film where, after she’s discovered she’s eight weeks pregnant, the heroine goes and plays a Chinese flute by the Seine. And the (literally) operatic climax, centred on Li and Yu’s characters, has to be seen to be believed.

CREDITS

Presented by SMG Pictures (CN), Hishow Entertainment (CN). Produced by Hishow Entertainment (CN), Oudiana Productions (FR).

Script: Dai Sijie, Nadine Perront. Photography: Saba Mazloum. Editing: Li Dongquan [Wenders Li], Li Mingwen. Music: Dou Peng. Art direction: An Bin, François Chauyaud. Costumes: Bai Xipo. Sound: Li Shuo, Zhen Hongmin, He Wei. Visual effects: Yang Zhi. Executive direction: Zhang Yi.

Cast: Liu Yifei (Elsa), Liu Ye (Ma Jianmin), Yu Shaoqun (Ma Xiaolin), Li Ming [Leon Lai] (Ma Rong), Tang Zuohui (music-shop owner), Sarah Bensoussan (doctor), Lin Xuanping (dormitory concierge), Jérôme Thevenet, Guillaume Gras (policemen), Jean-Yves Gautier (lawyer).

Premiere: Busan Film Festival (A Window on Asian Cinema), 9 Oct 2015.

Release: China, 20 May 2016; France, tba.