A Time in Quchi

暑假作业

Taiwan, 2013, colour, 2.35:1, 109 mins.

Director: Zhang Zuoji 张作骥.

Rating: 6/10.

Pleasant kids-in-summer movie is OK as it goes but could have been more.

STORY

Northern Taiwan, 3 Jul 2012. Ten year-old Guan Xiaobao (Yang Liangyu) is driven by his father (Yan Yongheng) to the home of his recently widowed grandfather (Guan Yunlong) in the Quchi hills south of Taibei. His parents are considering getting divorced and, because they are both busy, spend little time with him. Guan Xiaobao is a loner, and has a mutually argumentative relationship with his younger sister, Guan Juruo (Lin Yaruo), aka Seaweed. Guan Xiaobao has to adjust to country life, living with his strict grandfather and without any internet, but he also has been given some homework to do in his summer break, to write an essay on “the most interesting 20 days of my summer holiday”. His grandfather enrols him temporarily at the small local school where his divorced daughter (Yao Hanyi) teaches, but then, much to his chagrin, Guan Xiaobao’s mother (Jiang Shaoyi) visits and leaves Guan Juruo also in the grandfather’s care. At the school, Guan Xiaobao is an outsider, but he eventually makes a friend in aboriginal boy Huang Mingquan (Huang Mingquan) and his tubby friend Baozi (Wu Bingjun). He’s also liked by a poor girl student, nicknamed Bear (Gao Shuilian), whose family survives by collecting rubbish for recycling. Then one day Huang Mingquan has a serious accident in the river and is taken to hospital.

REVIEW

The promise shown by Taiwan writer-director Zhang Zuoji 张作骥 in his last feature, When Love Comes 当爱来的时候 (2010) – that he was entering a more accessible, emotionally open phase in his career – is partly realised in his seventh movie, A Time in Quchi 暑假作业, a fairly straightforward kids-in-summer picture. Working within a well-established Taiwan sub-genre – represented most famously by A Summer at Grandpa’s 冬冬的假期 (1984) by Hou Xiaoxian 侯孝贤 but also by many other less arty films – Zhang follows a 10-year-old boy, whose parents (on the cusp of divorce) dump him and his younger sister at the home of their grandfather in the hills south of Taibei. With no internet, not allowed to stay up late, and none of the usual urban supports, loner Guan Xiaobao – who’s built his own wall around himself to compensate for his workaholic parents’ disregard – finds he has to make friends to survive in the small community, a development that later causes him pain as well as pleasure.

Quchi is the warmest and most pleasurable sit of Zhang’s features to date but also, curiously, the least resonant. There’s none of the bleakness and sense of hopelessness of films like Ah Chung 忠仔 (1996), Darkness and Light 黑暗时光 (1999) and The Best of Times 美丽时光 (2002), nor any of their alienating artiness. There’s still a confusing tendency to introduce characters without delineating their exact relationship, but on the technical side editing and photography (with good use of widescreen for the verdant, hilly landscape) have a natural flow, and when Zhang holds a shot longer than normal it actually has a dramatic reason (as in the boy’s face near the end, as he leaves the community that has marked him emotionally).

Ironically, however, the film itself leaves little emotional trace – and far less than When Love Comes – as Zhang never allows the material to realise its full potential. The boy’s friendship with a local aboriginal boy is dramatically cut off with no resolving scene, as is the key relationship with his grouchy but kindly grandpa; in addition, a vague friendship with a local classroom beauty (whose drab home life recalls scenes in Ah Chung) is left tantalisingly half-fulfilled. Perhaps that’s the point of the film – that, as an outsider from the big city, Guan Xiaobao can only ever surf these people’s simpler lives – but with a little more give in the screenplay Quchi could have turned into something much more involving.

As it is, it’s a pleasant enough movie, with some lively performances surrounding the neutral one by young Yang Liangyu 杨亮俞 as Guan Xiaobao. Little Lin Yaruo 林亚鄀 is especially good as the younger sister who’s always chiding him, and Xie Mingquan 谢明诠 ditto as the rambunctious aboriginal boy who’s never enjoyed a proper family life. Dominating the whole cast, however, is 84-year-old writer-actor Guan Yunlong 管运龙, better known as Guan Guan 管管 (Out of the Blue 小爸爸的天空, aka Puppy Love, 1984), as the feisty grandfather who’s not afraid to speak his mind and holds on to his late wife’s memory by carrying around a stone with her face painted on it.

The Chinese title means “Summer Holiday Homework”, referring to Guan Xiaobao’s assignment to write an essay about his school break, excerpts from which are heard in voiceover during the film’s first half.

CREDITS

Presented by Chang Tso Chi Film Studio (TW). Produced by Chang Tso Chi Film Studio (TW).

Script: Zhang Zuoji. Photography: Yuan Qingguo. Editing: Zhang Zuoji. Music: Wu Ruiran. Art direction: Yang Zongying. Costume design: Xiao Youwei. Sound: Xie Huijing, Ye Yuese.

Cast: Guan Yunlong (Guan Xiaobao’s grandfather), Yan Yongheng (Guan Xiaobao’s father), Jiang Shaoyi (Guan Xiaobao’s mother), Yang Liangyu (Guan Xiaobao), Lin Yaruo (Guan Juruo/Seaweed, Guan Xiaobao’s younger sister), Yao Hanyi (Yao Hanyi, grandfather’s daughter), Chen Qihan (her daughter), Wu Meihe (Bear’s old nanny), Chen Ming (Bear’s father), Wen Huiming (Bear’s mother), Gao Shuilian (Da Xiong/Bear), Wang Jia’an (Xiaohua/Flower, her younger sister), Dong Han (Momo, her younger brother), Jin Ziyan (fish pool’s boss lady), Zheng Renshuo, Youlaotaiya Xiaohei (fish pool employees), Xie Mingquan (Xie Mingquan), Wu Bingjun (Baozi/Steamed Bun), You Qiwei (Ming, his friend), Wu Xiuxiu (director).

Premiere: Locarno Film Festival (Competition), 16 Aug 2013.

Release: Taiwan, 6 Dec 2013.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 10 Oct 2013.)