Mystery

浮城谜事

China/France, 2012, colour, 1.85:1, 95 mins.

Director: Lou Ye 娄烨.

Rating: 8/10.

Atmospheric web of love, betrayal and murder between a group of interwoven characters.

STORY

Wuhan, central China, the present day. Joyriding in the rain, a group of rich kids, led by tycoon’s son You Jiaming (Zhao Bingrui), run over a young woman on a highway, killing her. Some time earlier, Lu Jie (Hao Lei), who is married to businessman Qiao Yongzhao (Qin Hao) and has a young daughter, An’an (Du Yanlin), gets to know Sang Qi (Qi Xi), whose son Yuhang (Liu Yihang) attends the same kindergarten. One day, meeting Lu Jie in a coffee shop, Sang Qi says she thinks her husband is having an affaire, as she saw him going into a hotel with another woman. As an example of what she means, Sang Qi points to a couple in the street outside who are doing the same thing – and Lu Jie is stunned to see that it is Qiao Yongzhao with a young woman. In the hotel’s washroom, the shattered Lu Jie calls her friend Han Hui (Qu Ying) to pick her up; meanwhile, the young woman comes in, talking on her phone to Qiao Yongzhao. Lu Jie follows her. Later, Han Hui collects her and takes her home, where she makes desperate love with Qiao Yongzhao. Investigating the highway death, detective Tong Mingsong (Zu Feng) discovers the dead woman was a university student, Sun Xiaomin (Chang Fangyuan), and there is evidence she was hit on the head with a rock before she rolled down a slope and landed on the highway. Her ex-boyfriend was Qin Feng (Zhu Yawen), who happens to be a friend of Tong Mingsong, though Qin Feng says he hasn’t seen her since they broke up. Then, following Qiao Yongzhao one day, Lu Jie discovers he is having an affaire with Sang Qi.

REVIEW

After getting his career back on track with the raw, Paris-set tale of amour fou, Love and Bruises 花 (2011), Mainland director Lou Ye 娄烨 brings some of the same intensity to Mystery 浮城谜事, which, though also co-funded by France’s Les Films du Lendemain, is entirely set in China. Reverting to his Summer Palace 颐和园 (2006) d.p., Zeng Jian 曾剑 (Buddha Mountain 观音山, 2010), but adopting the same handheld, close-up style of shooting that puts all the emphasis on the character’s faces and emotions, Lou makes the central China metropolis of Wuhan almost seem like a big city anywhere, as the story follows a purely metaphysical path of love, betrayal and murder among a group of interwoven characters.

Though some of the plot developments feel a little contrived, that’s been part and parcel of Lou’s style since his breakout movie Suzhou River 苏州河 (1999). In every other respect it’s an enthralling meld of genre elements and his favourite subject of obsessive love that doesn’t rely this time on the shock value of nudity or sex scenes.

Again using a French editor (this time Simon Jacquet, Partir, 2009, Une vie meilleure, 2011), and regular composer Peyman Yazdanian, Lou weaves a fluid, atmospherically-scored web of events that plays with time in the early stages but soon settles down into a story that focuses not so much on the initial murder but on the amour fou of two women for the same man, a serial married womaniser played with a dour, disreputable charm by Qin Hao 秦昊 (the gay lover in Lou’s Spring Fever 春风沉醉的夜晚, 2009). Though it’s his infidelities that set events in motion, it’s the two women who are in the driving seat, and they’re beautifully played by Hao Lei 郝蕾 (the lead in Summer Palace) as the wife who takes a slow-burning revenge and Qi Xi 齐溪, making a major impression in her first main role as “the other woman” who won’t give him up. The edgy relationship between the two, which is revealed to be far more complex than appears at first sight, is what drives the movie.

There’s good support by Zu Feng 祖峰 as the workaday detective and Zhu Yawen 朱亚文 as his drinking pal, and Chang Fangyuan 常方源 (the office Plain Jane in What Women Want 我知女人心, 2011) as the murdered girl. With its theme of deceit and mutual spying, the film has vague echoes of Lou’s Spring Fever, but with a way more developed script – inspired by an online diary, See How I Dealt With My Scumbag Man and His Mistress 看我如何收拾贱男和小三 , on the popular Mainland forum www.tianya.cn – by Mei Feng 梅峰, a regular collaborator with the director (Purple Butterfly 紫蝴蝶, 2003; Summer Palace; Spring Fever). As he approaches his 50s, Lou has lost none of his sometimes hit-and-miss maverick approach but appears to be developing a new stage of film-making maturity.

The original title roughly means “Mystery in a Floating City”.

CREDITS

Presented by Dream Author Pictures (CN), Les Films du Lendemain (FR).

Script: Mei Feng, Yu Fan, Lou Ye. Original story: Li Yongfang. Photography: Zeng Jian. Editing: Simon Jacquet. Music: Peyman Yazdanian. Art direction: Peng Shaoying, Du Luxi. Costume design: Mai Linlin [LinLin May]. Sound: Fu Kang, Guo Ming.

Cast: Hao Lei (Lu Jie), Qin Hao (Qiao Yongzhao), Qi Xi (Sang Qi), Zu Feng (Tong Mingsong, the detective), Zhu Yawen (Qin Feng, his friend), Chang Fangyuan (Sun Xiaomin, “Wenzi”), Qu Ying (Han Hui, Lu Jie’s friend), Du Yanlin (An’an, Lu Jie’s daughter), Liu Yihang (Yuhang, Sang Qi’s son), Yu Longgang (homeless man), Zhao Bingrui (You Jiaming), Song Ning (Ouyang), Wang Yiru (Wang), Ji Shiai (Mrs. Sun, Sun Xiaomin’s mother), Du Juan (You Jiaming’s girlfriend).

Premiere: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), 17 May 2012.

Release: China, 19 Oct 2012; France, 20 Mar 2013.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 1 Nov 2012.)