Go Away Mr. Tumor!

滚蛋吧！肿瘤君

China/Hong Kong, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 122 mins.

Director: Han Yan 韩延.

Rating: 7/10.

Offbeat romantic comedy-cum-cancer movie is another fine platform for Mainland actress Bai Baihe.

STORY

Beijing, 2012. Rebellious but klutzy, Xiong Dun (Bai Baihe) has come to the capital with big dreams. She shares a flat with tomboyish Lao Zheng (Cheng Yi), who’s an amateur boxer, and workaholic Aimi (Zhang Zixuan), who’s employed by a Japanese company. Her other BFF is metrosexual Xiaoxia (Liu Ruilin), a colleague at the same company where she works as an illustrator. On her 29th birthday, however, Xiong Dun first loses her job after criticising her boss (Li Xinyu) and then finds her boyfriend Xiaochuan (Shen Teng) is cheating on her with another woman (Qin Li). That evening, at a surprise party organised by her three pals, she passes out and wakes up in hospital, where she immediately falls for the doctor, Liang Junbai (Wu Yanzu), who’s treating her. In the next bed is a boy, Maodou (Li Jinchen), who has leukemia. While waiting for the results of tests, she unsuccessfully tries to seduce Liang Junbai and, thinking she also has leukemia, is relieved to discover from her friends that she is “only” suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Liang Junbai tells her parents she has only a 20% chance of survival but he will treat her with chemotherapy to ease the symptoms. Xiong Dun finally bonds with a new patient in the next bed, the quarrelsome Xia Meng (Li Yuan), who joins her group of BFFs. They all try to make the best of things, including humiliating Xiong Dun’s ex-boyfriend, and finally Xiong Dun is discharged from hospital. But after a short visit to her hometown to see her parents, Xiong Dun ends up back in hospital, again under Liang Junbai, on whom she still has a hopeless crush.

REVIEW

Starting as a kind of offbeat rom-com, as a perky cancer patient falls for her hospital doctor, Go Away Mr. Tumor! 滚蛋吧！肿瘤君 gradually morphs into much more, a touching portrait of a never-say-die young woman that skirts most weepie conventions. That’s partly due to the excellent ensemble cast and smart direction; but it’s equally due to the carefully calibrated lead performance by Bai Baihe 白百何, 31, who again takes a potentially one-dimensional role and gives it subtle layers of emotional depth. Though the film doesn’t entirely escape disease-of-the-week conventions, it’s still an entertaining, fresh and (in the final half-hour) genuinely moving two hours that’s another fine platform for one of China’s most interesting young actresses (rom-com Love Is Not Blind 失恋33天, 2011; action fantasy Monster Hunt 捉妖及, 2015).

The script is based on the online manga by Xiong Dun 熊顿 (pen name of Xiang Yao 项瑶) who humorously catalogued her own struggle with cancer on her website and Weibo account before dying on 16 Nov 2012, aged 30. The material was published as a book (Get Out Mr. Tumor 滚蛋吧！肿瘤君) two months before her death, and has also been turned into a play (Go Away Mr. Tumour 滚蛋吧！肿瘤君), starring Jiang Xiaohan 蒋小涵 and Guo Jiaming 郭家铭, that was briefly staged in Shanghai and Beijing during Jul-Aug 2015, just prior to the film’s Mainland release (see poster, left). A TV drama series is also in the works, developed by Mango Entertainment 湖南芒果娱乐 and one of the film’s producers, Beijing Libido Movie & Culture Media 北京力比多文化传媒.

The film is the highest profile to date by Shandong-born director Han Yan 韩延, 32, who first hit the mainstream with rom-com First Time 第一次 (2012), after a chequered career largely with youth movies (我把初吻献给谁, 2006; Angel’s Heart 天那边, 2007; The Tropic of Cancer 摊开你的地图, 2008; Let Me Help You Be in Line 让我为你靠点谱, 2009) as well as China’s first motor-racing drama, Racer Legend 赛车传奇 (2011), which he co-directed under the pseudonym Han Zhixia 韩之夏. An inventive re-working of a South Korean weepie, First Time also centred on a young woman with a chronic illness that had destroyed her dream, but Han cleverly took the material and completely restructured it into an offbeat rom-com, as well as drawing fine playing from leads Zhao Youting 赵又廷 [Mark Chao], Yang Ying 杨颖 [Angelababy] and veteran actress Jiang Shan 江珊.

Bai, then with mega-hit Love Is Not Blind behind her but still at the start of her big-screen career, had a fun cameo in the film as a rock singer, the first hint that she could do more than just cute. So it’s good karma that she and Han are reunited in Tumor which, though similarly themed, is also a spin on a established genre. After playing an amnesiac in The Stolen Years 被偷走的那五年 (2013) and a cosmetic-surgery junkie in black comedy The Truth about Beauty 整容日记 (2014), Bai has shown a talent for taking on offbeat genre roles and, at least in the latter, turning them into genuinely affecting portraits.

In Tumor, the jury is still out during the first half, which accentuates her elfin-klutzy side as the plot is established, and is overloaded with VFX-laden fantasy sequences and technical flash (split-screen, multi-screen, pop-ups etc.). But just when the fantasy sequences – parodying everything from zombie movies through costume dramas to South Korean romances – look like overwhelming the narrative, Bai and Han slowly steer the film into deeper waters, building a portrait of a young woman who’s dying before she’s really experienced both life and love. With Hong Kong co-star Wu Yanzu 吴彦祖 [Daniel Wu] in a reined-back performance as the doctor on whom she has an uncontrollable crush, plus Mainland veteran Liu Lili 刘莉莉 as her quietly sorrowful mother with whom she’s always had an edgy relationship, the film becomes a funny-sad tear-jerker with considerable clout.

As her BFF chorus, Cheng Yi 程伊, Zhang Zixuan 张子萱 (Love Is Not Blind; Fleet of Time 匆匆那年, 2014) and Liu Ruilin 刘芮麟 give solid support as a tomboy, girly girl and metrosexual guy, joined in the later stages by model-turned-actress Li Yuan 李媛 (Groupie 果, 2009; Stand by Me 奋斗, 2011) as a quarrelsome fellow-patient. There’s not much plot to the movie – and no Big Twist – but the playing and direction sustain the running time. Hong Kong d.p. Lin Zhijian 林志坚 [Charlie Lam], who shot Han’s First Time, again provides succulent widescreen images of both wintertime Beijing and hospital interiors, and the soundtrack music only occasionally makes a melodramatic misstep (as in the intrusive use of the Bob Dylan song Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door).

CREDITS

Presented by Wanda Media (CN), Gosh Film (CN), Irresistible Alpha (HK), TIK Films (Beijing) (CN). Produced by Wanda Media (CN), Gosh Film (CN), Gosh Pictures Entertainment (CN), Beijing Libido Movie & Culture Media (CN).

Script: Yuan Yuan, Zhang Weizhong. Manga: Xiong Dun. Photography: Lin Zhijian [Charlie Lam]. Editing: Yu Hongzhao, Meng Peicong. Music: Liu Wen, Hu Zi. Art direction: Li Qingyu, Zhang Yi. Costume design: Wang Baoyi. Sound: Xia Jiankui, Yu Yi’nan. Action: Han Guanhua. Visual effects: Wang Chengcheng. Executive directors: Qian Ru, Wang Guannan.

Cast: Bai Baihe (Xiong Dun), Wu Yanzu [Daniel Wu] (Liang Junbai, doctor), Li Yuan (Xia Meng), Liu Ruilin (Xiaoxia), Zhang Zixuan (Aimi/Amy), Cheng Yi (Lao Zheng), Liu Lili (Xiong Dun’s mother), Li Jianyi (Xiong Dun’s father), Li Xiaochuan (Lao Cui, Maodou’s father), Li Jinchen (Maodou, Lao Cui’s son), Shen Teng (Xiaochuan, Xiong Dun’s ex-boyfriend), Qin Li (his girlfriend), Liu Shiliu (Lao Zheng’s work colleague), Li Xinyu (Xiong Dun’s boss), Yamazaki Keiichi (Aimi’s Japanese boss), Yang Fan (bridegroom), Xing Zi (bride), Xu Guoliang (priest), Wei Guo (chief physician), Liu Fang (head nurse), Tian Le (nurse), Lian Jie (trainee), Ma Boyong.

Release: China, 13 Aug 2015; Hong Kong, 12 Nov 2015.