The Mahjong Box

三缺一

China, 2016, colour, 1.85:1, 92 mins.

Director: Fabien Gaillard 高飞.

Rating: 7/10.

Doppleganger drama centred on a widower in Shanghai has a naturalness and lack of exoticism.

STORY

Shanghai, 2014. Tom, a professional photographer, has returned to the city but is still distraught over the death of his wife, art-gallery owner Ling (Tan Zhuo). He visits the house in which they lived along with her mother (Ge Zhaomei) but avoids meeting the latter. (Tom and Ling had a happy marriage, and even her mother moving in with them from Sichuan worked okay. But one day Ling suddenly collapsed at work from a stroke and died.) When Tom has been back in Shanghai for a couple of months, and his former mother-in-law has a small accident, he moves back into the house to live with her. Depressed on the anniversary of Ling’s death, Tom considers suicide but is saved by a passing street performer (Yang Haiqing) who talks him out of it. Then, at a cosplay fair where he’s working, Tom spots a young hostess, Bobo (Tan Zhuo), who’s the spitting image of Ling and is also a Sichuanese from Chongqing. She’s hard-bitten and trying to make it as a model in the big city. After gradually getting to know her, he finds she also works as a hostess at a night club, along with her friend Qingqing (Sun Mengchun), to attract customers. Despite that, the two later bond when Tom accompanies Bobo to a modelling audition and he later tells her about his late wife. Planning to marry Bobo, Tom introduces her to his friends and former mother-in-law, all of whom spot her likeness to Ling and are apprehensive about Tom’s state of mind. The only one who doesn’t know about the likeness is Bobo herself.

REVIEW

Six years after his charming cross-cultural romance Lao Wai 老外 (2010), Shanghai-based French filmmaker Fabien Gaillard 高飞 returns with another tale of West-East affections that has a more conventionally filmy surface than his easygoing first feature but the same naturalness and lack of exoticism in its portrayal of the relationships and China itself. As a photographer, Tom, becomes obsessed with a woman who’s the spitting image of his recently deceased wife, the movie naturally contains some of the same psychological baggage as Doppelganger classics like Vertigo (1958), Obsession (1976) or Suzhou River 苏州河 (2000). But Gaillard isn’t really interested in spinning a twistful mystery or suspenseful thriller; as soon becomes clear, The Mahjong Box 三缺一 is about saying goodbye to one’s nearest and dearest, and moving on – and the film is at its strongest when focusing on simple relationships than on psychological drama.

In fact, the Doppelganger theme doesn’t arrive until almost halfway through the movie: the first 40-odd minutes are taken up with Tom’s grief, flashbacks to the life and death of his Chinese wife, and the character of her mother who moves in with them and later becomes Tom’s emotional crutch when he restarts his life in Shanghai. The film shifts gears when he spots a dead ringer for his late wife at a cosplay fair, and his obsessive desire to get to know her – against all the walls that she, a hard-bitten wannabe model, constructs between them – propels the next 20 minutes before she finally gives in to what she thinks is his honest affection.

Though the Doppelganger idea is not the sine qua non – and it’s made quite clear that there’s no mysterious subtext to the story – the film still depends on having the right actress for the part, and here Tan Zhuo 谭卓 is simply excellent. An under-rated actress who hasn’t always received the parts she deserves, 32-year-old Tan (Spring Fever 春风沉醉的夜晚, 2009; Mr. Tree Hello! 树先生, 2011; Lotus 小荷, 2012) etches not only the two distinct characters of the loving, yuppie wife and hard-nosed model-cum-bargirl but also all points inbetween, especially as the latter slowly drops her protective front. It’s an immensely subtle performance that’s quietly reflected by that of Ge Zhaomei 葛兆美 as the tolerant but ever-observant mother-in-law.

In both roles, Tan cooks up good natural chemistry with her co-lead, Canada-born, Los Angeles-raised James Alofs, who acts entirely (and convincingly) in Mandarin – a nice touch which not only makes his nationality (never stated) of no importance to the story but also erases all the usual cliched barriers in films about foreigners in China. The 29-year-old actor, who played the shot-down airman in WW2 TV drama The Blood Chit 生死血符 (2015), directed by Guan Hu 管虎, is fine as a charmer with Tan and in quieter moments with the other actors but isn’t up to the role’s more dramatic moments, especially the finale centred on a majiang game. Through no fault of Tan or Ge, the scene doesn’t come off as it should, though a subsequent coda does a lot to erase the weakness and end the film on a suitable note of closure.

Supporting roles are all OK, with a special mention for Li Wenjun 李文俊 as a creepy-looking talent scout. Though his role is more a device to bring Tom and the lookalike together than anything to do with main story, Li gives it a colour that is all part of Gaillard’s portrait of the city in which he’s made his home. The crisp photography by Gilles Labarbe, a d.p. on Lao Wai, shows Shanghai in all its facets – cosmopolitan, leafy, snobby, tolerant, bottom-line entrepreneurial – with pointed backgrounds that are rarely showy for their own sake. Editing by another returnee, Coralie Van Rietschoten, is admirably trim, and the rock-ethereal music by French composer Dream Koala helps to establish Tom’s mindset in the early going before reappearing at the end.

The film’s English title refers to a box of majiang tiles that Tom, his wife and his mother-in-law used to play the game, and thus has a sentimental meaning. The Chinese title is a three-character phrase, derived from the game, that literally means “we need a fourth player” but more generally means that things can’t carry on the same due to the lack of people.

CREDITS

Presented by Mofei Pictures (Beijing) International Culture & Media (CN).

Script: Fabien Gaillard. Photography: Gilles Labarbe. Editing: Coralie Van Rietschoten. Music: Dream Koala. Art direction: Zhu Minqi. Styling: Yan Mi. Sound: Li Danfeng, Si Zhonglin, Shen Jianqin.

Cast: James Alofs (Tom), Tan Zhuo (Ling; Bobo), Ge Zhaomei (Ling’s mother), Song Xingcheng (Gao Yuan), Yang Haiqing (Biao Long, street performer), Li Wenjun (Richard, model scout), Sun Mengchun (Qingqing), Ni Zheng (Li Wen, Gao Yuan’s wife), Miao Yunru (Xiaopingguo/Little Apple, Gao Yuan’s daughter), Wang Yue (Michelle, woman in club), Dai Yu (Gao Yuan’s assistant), Qiu Weiyi (club boss), Zhang Lili (lingerie designer), Xu Xiao (journalist), Wang Liping (wedding-dress saleswoman), Zhu Zichan (photographer).

Premiere: Asian Film Festival of Dallas, 15 Jul 2016.

Release: China, 24 Feb 2017.