Baby

宝贝儿

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 96 mins.

Director: Liu Jie 刘杰.

Rating: 5/10.

Verismo drama centred on a social crusader has a lack of nuance that boxes in lead actress Yang Mi.

STORY

Nanjing city, Jiangsu province, central China, the present day. As she has now turned 18, Jiang Meng (Yang Mi) is required by law to leave her foster family as she was never formally adopted. She is unwilling to do so, as her foster mother is now widowed and partially paralysed, the old family dwelling on the outskirts of the city is due to be pulled down, and she sees the place as home. Local welfare-shelter head Wang (Wang Yanjun) has been letting Jiang Meng work for the agency until she finds a job, and Jiang Meng says she will pay her back as soon as possible. A health check reveals she must not undertake any physically taxing work, as in her youth she had a series of operations to counter a group of birth defects known as the VACTERL association; she also cannot have children as she has had a hysterectomy. After a job agency fails to fulfil her exacting demands, a deaf-and-dumb friend, Xiaojun (Li Hongqi), offers her a job at his place of work, delivering goods, for RMB2,000 a month. She turns him down, finally taking a job as a cleaner at a children’s hospital, at RMB2,600 a month. There she learns about the case of a young baby with VACTERL who urgently needs a colostomy operation but whom the father, Xu Zhewei (Guo Jingfei), just wants to leave in hospital to quietly pass away. When the hospital says this isn’t possible, he checks the baby out. Jiang Meng steals the baby’s file and tries to contact the family, finally taking a bus out to the neighbouring city of Ma’anshan to confront them. There she discovers the baby has been left in a hospice and, when the father refuses to listen to her, she involves the police. They say they can’t do anything as the father is the baby’s legal guardian. But Jiang Meng won’t give up, driven by her own experience that the baby’s condition is operable.

REVIEW

After a string of ho-hum roles in big productions – L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties 爵迹 (2016), Reset 逆时营救 (2017), Brotherhood of Blades II: The Infernal Battlefield 绣春刀II 修罗战场 (2017) – Mainland actress Yang Mi 杨幂, 32, again tries to prove she can carry a non-rom-com movie with Baby 宝贝儿, a verismo drama about a young woman’s struggle to save a child with the same congenital condition. It’s Yang’s biggest challenge since playing the blind heroine in The Witness 我是证人 (2015), and the results are just as mixed, not helped in this case by a script and direction that boxes her in on all sides and ends up making the film look like a vanity outing by a popular actress seeking serious credentials. Mainland box office was a mere RMB25 million, not bad for an art movie but disappointing given Yang’s name and her recent successes on the small screen.

The modest movie, with a largely non-professional cast, is the seventh feature by d.p.-turned-director Liu Jie, 50, whose heart seems to be in festival fare (Courtyard on Horseback 马背上的法庭 , 2006; Judge 透析, 2009; De Lan 德兰, 2015) but whose most accomplished productions have been solidly generic (the beautifully crafted, high-school charmer Young Style 青春派, 2013, and the slavish South Korean thriller remake Hide and Seek 捉迷藏, 2016). Inspired by a real-life case almost a decade ago, Baby fits alongside Liu’s legalistic, social dramas Courtyard and Judge but is far less nuanced.

Tightly focused on a young Nanjing woman, Jiang Meng, who’s turned 18 and is therefore forced, by law, to leave the home of her foster mother (who never formally adopted her), it follows her personal crusade to save a baby whose parents just want to let quietly pass away from her illness rather than undergo an operation with no guaranteed success. The main dramatic driver is that Jiang Meng survived the same syndrome with multiple operations when a child; the script’s weakness is that it never makes the depth of her crusade convincing, coming at a time when she has more than enough problems of her own (health, employment, domicile, partially paralysed foster mother) and legally it’s none of her business anyway.

Instead of any real dialogue, Liu’s script substitutes a perpetually grim, dogged look and pure truculence on Jiang Meng’s part – which is occasionally effective (as in her harassment of the police to help her) but gives Yang few opportunities as an actress. Constantly advised by friends and well-wishers not to get involved, and sidelined by the actual law, the persistent Jiang Meng hardly emerges as a sympathetic figure; and Liu’s addition of a kindly, deaf-mute friend (played by Taiwan’s Li Hongqi, 28, the punky lead in Thanatos, Drunk 醉•生梦死, 2015, and wacky drummer in City of Rock 缝纫机乐队, 2017) is a shameless device to beef up the film’s social-crusading credentials. As the baby’s equally stubborn father, Guo Jingfei 郭京飞 (21 Karat 21克拉, 2018; Hanson and the Beast 二代妖精之今生有幸, 2017), though in a smallish role, is actually the most emotionally engaging figure. Other roles are taken by non-pros but are all effective within their limitations.

Widescreen camerawork by China-based German d.p. Florian Zinke 陆一帆, who shot Liu’s grim De Lan, is realistically handheld but not grungy, and is carefully composed when it wants to be. Editing by Hong Kong and Taiwan veterans Zhang Shuping 张叔平 [William Chang] and Liao Qingsong 廖庆松 is tight and to the point, and use of music very limited. Further enhancing the film’s artistic credentials is a creative producer 监制 credit to Taiwan veteran Hou Xiaoxian 侯孝贤. Several of the cast speak in Nanjing dialect, though Yang largely speaks in more standard Mandarin.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Culture (CN), Zhejiang Hengdian Film (CN), 3C Films (CN), Nanjing Sino-Movie Media & Culture (CN).

Script: Liu Jie. Photography: Florian Zinke. Editing: Zhang Shuping [William Chang], Liao Qingsong. Music: Guo Sida. Art direction: Yuan Feng. Costumes: Yuan Yuan, Liu Yuan. Sound: Du Duzhi, Wu Shuyao.

Cast: Yang Mi (Jiang Meng), Guo Jingfei (Xu Zhewei), Li Hongqi (Xiaojun), Wang Yanjun (Wang, welfare-shelter head), Zhu Shaojun, Yan Surong.

Premiere: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), 12 Sep 2018.

Release: China, 19 Oct 2018.