Buddha Mountain

观音山

China,2010, colour, 2.35:1, 104 mins.

Director: Li Yu 李玉.

Rating: 8/10.

Loosely-built drama of three youngsters and a retired opera singer is deceptively impressive.

STORY

Chengdu, Sichuan province, China, 2009. Three young, inseparable friends while away the sweaty summer together in the provincial capital: Ding Bo (Chen Bolin), an unregistered motorbike courier who’s estranged from his train driver father (Fang Li); Fei Zao (Fei Long), his fat friend from school days with whom he shares lodgings; and Nanfeng (Fan Bingbing), an outwardly tough young woman from a small town outside Chengdu who sings in a bar. Needing to find new accommodation, the three answer an advertisement by retired Beijing Opera performer Chang Yueqin (Zhang Aijia) – a lonely widow who is still grieving from her son’s death in a car accident a year ago – and move into two rooms in her top-floor flat. Ding Bo attends his widowed father’s wedding to a younger woman, Wang Juan (Liu Jie), but gets drunk and creates a scene. Nanfeng hears she is being sued for RMB20,000 by a customer (Yuan Ze) she accidentally injured at the bar one night, and Ding Bo uses money he finds hidden by Chang Yueqin in her bedroom to pay the amount. Chang Yueqin is visited one evening by her dead son’s crippled girlfriend, Lin Yue (Jin Jing), whom she still blames for the accident; Lin Yue wants to patch things up, but Chang Yueqin bawls her out. When Chang Yueqin attempts suicide by cutting her wrists, the trio rush her to hospital in the nick of time. They start to replace the money stolen from Chang Yueqin’s secret stash, and take her on an outing one day to Guanyin Shan (Buddha Mountain), where they help to repair a small Buddhist temple. Gradually, relations between Chang Yueqin and the youngsters start to improve, and Chang Yueqin attains a new peace of mind. But then Nanfeng falls out with Ding Bo when she sees him making out with a girl at a party.

REVIEW

A loosely woven web of emotions that builds to a suprisingly moving finale, this fourth feature by director Li Yu 李玉 could easily be retitled Lost in Chengdu, a looser, southern cousin to her last movie, the only slightly less impressive Lost in Beijing 苹果 (2007). Shot through with an identical sense of spiritual drift, and an underlying need by its characters to form family-like groups to replace real blood ties, Buddha Mountain again shows Li’s documentary background in its realistic portrayal of contemporary China without falling into the arty-ennui trap of many of her indie colleagues. Though the film has been marketed in China as a vehicle for 29-year-old Mainland actress Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 (who also starred in Lost in Beijing just prior to her diva transformation) and Taiwan moody-boy Chen Bolin 陈柏霖, it’s actually grounded by superb playing from top-billed Taiwan veteran Zhang Aijia 张艾嘉 [Sylvia Chang], in one of the best performances of her 40-year career.

As a retired Beijing Opera singer still grieving over the death of her son, Zhang provides the film’s emotional centre, around which the three youngsters – played by Fan, Chen and Fei Long 肥龙 – flutter like moths. Embittered, lonely and grumpy, Zhang’s character is first exploited by the rootless trio but later helped and finally envied as she attains a spiritual release they so desperately need in their own lives. A beautifully understated scene in which Fan’s outwardly tough bar-singer seeks solace with the older woman in bed one night is among the most affecting in the film, and typical of the way in which it communicates much through little dialogue.

The movie can be faulted for its patchwork construction and lack of backgrounding: Zhang’s character, which could easily have filled an entire film, sometimes seems sidelined in favour of the less interesting youngsters, and the sexually vague relationship between Chen and Fan’s characters is weakly explained in a late-on scene. The script by Li and indie producer Fang Li 方励 (Lost in Beijing; Summer Palace 颐和园, 2006; plus Li’s second feature, Dam Street 红颜, 2005) requires the viewer to fill in narrative gaps, takes valuable time out for montages (such as the youngsters joy-riding on a train to the mountains), throws in actual footage of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake for no justifiable reason, and blithely ignores details like Chen’s character having a strong Taiwan accent when he’s apparently been raised in Sichuan. (Zhang adopts more of a Mainland accent for her character.)

Gradually, however, the fluid, impressionistic feel becomes the film’s strongest card, as things move towards an ending that’s purely metaphysical – and feels absolutely right in the circumstances. Li has come a long way as a director since her awkward debut, lesbian drama Fish and Elephant 今年夏天 (2001), and her burnished, Euro-style Dam Street. With Lost in Beijing and Buddha Mountain she’s carved a personal style that seems random but is technically very assured – just for starters, witness the scene of a close escape by two characters on a railway line. Occasional use of warm music by Iranian composer Peyman Yazdanian (Summer Palace) binds the movie together at key points, and handheld photography by Zeng Jian 曾剑 (Lost in Beijing, Summer Palace) makes discreet play with light within a naturalistic palette.

Chen is okay, and less mumbly than in many of his movies, and Fei Long very likable as the fatty of the group. But it’s Fan who again shows she can be more than just an exotic clotheshorse when she wants to be – especially in a memorable early scene in which she avenges an insult to one of the group. Without overdoing the spunk, she’s entirely believable as an ambitious smalltown girl who’s moved to the big city to support her dysfunctional family back home. Other roles are fleeting, though Jin Jing 金晶 is touching as the (genuinely crippled) girlfriend of the dead son and producer Fang is fine as the traindriver father.

The film’s Chinese title means “Guanyin Mountain” rather than “Buddha Mountain”, with Guanyin being a Buddhist goddess who assumes the sorrows of the world – a crucial element in the characters’ filmic journey.

CREDITS

Presented by Laurel Films (CN).

Script: Li Yu, Fang Li. Original story: Fang Li, Li Yu. Photography: Zeng Jian. Editing: Zeng Jian, Karl Riedl. Music: Peyman Yazdanian. Art direction: Liu Weixin, Li Jun. Sound: Du Zegang, Du Duzhi.

Cast: Zhang Aijia [Sylvia Chang] (Chang Yueqin, the retired opera singer), Fan Bingbing (Nanfeng), Chen Bolin (Ding Bo), Fei Long (Fei Zao/Fatso), Jin Jing (Lin Yue, girlfriend of Chang’s dead son), Fang Li (Ding Bo’s father), Liu Jie (Wang Juan, his second wife), Bao Zhenjiang (Buddhist temple monk), Zhou Jing (Zhou Jing, the Peking Opera performer), Shen Wen (Wang, the Peking Opera director), Li Di (bar owner), Yuan Ze (Zhao Bo, the injured bar customer), Chen Yu (bar singer), Shi Minfang (Nanfeng’s mother), Wang Guoyu (Nanfeng’s father), Ding Juan (home party host), Huang Gongwang (grandfather), Duan Bowen (gang leader), Lisi Danni (gang girl), Xie Tian (community policeman), Li Huijuan (Chang’s neighbour), Xiang Xue (club girl), Huang Ting (property developer), Wu Xiaorong (Lin’s mother), Zhu Pingkang (Lin’s father), Hong Wenxuan (funeral-money seller), Wang Ting, Hu Panke, Guan Yue (Nanfeng’s former classmates), Yin Yiwei (abused car owner), Liu Wenguang (wedding MC), Zeng Jian (motorcycle customer).

Premiere: Tokyo Film Festival (Competition), 24 Oct 2010.

Release: China, 4 Mar 2011.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 23 Apr 2011.)