Rock Hero

摇滚英雄

China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 91 mins.

Director: Tan Hua 谭华.

Rating: 6/10.

Well played, though thinly plotted, look back at China’s rock scene of the ’90s.

STORY

Beijing, 2014. Nineties rock legend Wu Wei (Qin Hao), now in his 40s, is back in the public gaze after being in a detention centre in Chaoyang district for three months following his arrest for being drunk and disorderly. He’s still best remembered for having a relationship in his prime with an actress, Li Ai (Li Meng). When he returns, he finds his agent/landlord, Ruan Dawei, has rented the upstairs room to a young student, Chunxiao (Liu Yase), 19, who also works part-time in a bar. (Back in 1994, Wu Wei first met Li Ai in the countryside by a train line; she said she was an actress, and he played his guitar to her. They later met again by chance, after he and his band, The Dreams (梦乐队), had done a gig; Chunxiao was then staying with her cousin, Meimei. After signing with agent Dawei, Wu Wei and The Dreams started to rise rapidly and Li Ai joined them.) Wu Wei and Chunxiao get to know each other, and she has a row with him when he brings home a western girl one night. (As the band became famous, their record company decided it wanted just Wu Wei in the future and refused to release the band’s record unless Wu Wei signed a solo contract. Though it meant the end of the band, he finally signed. Li Ai then caught Wu Wei having sex with the band’s photographer, Jiang Qian [Ma Kaiman].) After their row, Wu Wei wakes to find Chunxiao has disappeared. He goes to look for her at a rock concert outside the city, where Chunxiao reveals who she actually is.

REVIEW

Though it’s never much more than a collection of music videos strung together by a thin plot, Rock Hero 摇滚英雄 sports some good performances that hold the attention and an agreeably loose feel that mirrors the lives of its protagonists. It’s the most personal film to date by Tan Hua 谭华, a writer-director who also composes and sings under the stage name Zuo Xiaoan 左小岸, and whose previous three features – A Summer Way 夏至 (2007), A Chinese E.T. Boy 我是外星人 (2010, co-directed with Zhao Guoqiang 赵国强) and Big Big Man 大人物 (2011) – have been lighter and more fanciful. Music, of the folkloric kind, played an important role in the rural drama E.T. Boy, but here it’s the main course, looking at a washed-up rock hero from the ’90s whose life is put back on track by a young student he finds himself sharing his home with.

The film bills itself as “China’s first rock ‘n’ roll youth film”, which isn’t actually true: Zhang Yuan’s Beijing Bastards 北京杂种 (1993), which was actually made during China’s greatest decade for that style of music, deserves the tag instead, and took a much harder look at the whole scene than Rock Hero. Tan’s film does, however, communicate his sheer love for the period and its music, flashing back to that now-vanished era as the protagonist recalls days on the road, his self-serving romance with a young actress, and the ruthless way in which he managed his career.

Though playing a few years older than he actually is, Eric Qin 秦昊, 36, makes a convincing lead – and by coincidence played an almost identical role in Forever Young 怒放之青春再见 (2014), about a group of middle-aged rockers looking back at their college days. A variable actor who can be good when he’s properly cast (Mystery 浮城谜事, 2012; Blind Massage 推拿, 2014), Qin holds the film together with a kind of scruffy charm and connects well with younger actress-singer Liu Yase 刘雅瑟 (the tomboy in So Young 致我们终将逝去的青春, 2013), who’s bright and likeable as the young flatmate who takes a personal interest in his well-being. As his love of 20 years earlier, Li Meng 李梦, who was so good as the factory doctor in the recent Young Love Lost 少年巴比伦 (2015), is okay in the darker role of an actress who falls under the rocker’s spell.

For the record, the film, which began shooting in autumn 2013, is the first producer credit for Taiwan actress-singer Yi Nengjing 伊能静 (Good Men, Good Women 好男好女, 1995; Flowers of Shanghai 海上花, 1998), who’s also billed with “script consultation”. Aka Annie Shizuka Inoh and, more recently, Annie Yi, she married Qin in Mar 2015.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Goodtime Studio (CN), Sichuan Yijingtiandi Culture & Media (CN), David Entertainment (CN), Beijing Xingguang Yingmei (CN), Balintimes Media Group (CN), China Movie Channel (CN). Produced by Beijing Good Time Studio (CN), Sichuan Yijingtiandi Culture & Media (CN).

Script: Tan Hua. Script consultation: Yi Nengjing [Annie Yi]. Photography: Ma Jian. Editing: Tan Hua. Music production: Zhu Jintai. Art direction: Zhou Yu, Bai Furui. Styling: Zhao Yiran. Sound: Li Tao. Special effects: Li Tao, Li Geng.

Cast: Qin Hao (Wu Wei), Li Meng (Li Ai), Liu Yase (Jiang Chunxiao), Durizhaorigetu (Haili), Ma Kaiman (Jiang Qian), Li Qingyun (Zuo Jian), Guo Weilong (soccer boy), Wang Chenhao (Xiaowen), Li Xinran (Rong), Wang Feng (young Wu Wei), Li Mengchen.

Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Focus China), 14 Jun 2015.

Release: China, 20 Jun 2015.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 21 Jul 2015.)