Ala Changso

阿拉姜色

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 109 mins.

Director: Sonthar Gyal 松太加.

Rating: 4/10.

Strung-out drama partly centred on a young wife’s pilgrimage to Lhasa is empty at a script level.

STORY

Tibet province, southwest China, the present day, spring. Drolma (Nyima Sungsung), who has been happily married to Dorje (Yungdrung Gyal) for six years, has been having pains and visits a hospital doctor (Liao Xi) on her own. After extensive tests, she tells Dorje that all is well. She insists on going on a pilgrimage to the provincial capital, Lhasa, prostrating herself all the way. At 5 kilometres a day, the journey will take her about a year, though she plans on doing it in 7-8 months. Before leaving she visits the home of her parents, who look after Norbu (Sechok Gyal), her 10-year-old son by another man who is now dead. The emotionally volatile Norbu suffers from some kind of anti-social mental problem and won’t come out to see her off. Two younger women, Lhakye and Sherab Tso, accompany Drolma on her pilgrimage, helping to carry stuff. However, after less than a month, Lhakye gives up; and Dorje, who has learned the truth about Drolma, finds her on the road and tries to persuade her to give up the pilgrimage and visit a big hospital in Chengdu. She refuses, saying her illness is her fate. After Sherab Tso gives up, Drolma is left on her own, so Dorje accompanies her. After two months on the road, they’re visited by Norbu, brought by Dorje’s younger brother. He ends up wanting to stay with Drolma and Dorje, so the whole family continues the journey. En route they are helped by a kindly local, Dandar (Kimba), whose two children Norbu plays with. But then, some three months into the pilgrimage, Drolma collapses on the road.

REVIEW

After his small but affecting family study River གཙང་པོ | 河 (2015), Tibetan Chinese film-maker Sonthar Gyal 松太加, 44, falls back into many of the arty, film-school formulae that made up his debut feature, The Sun Beaten Path 太阳总在左边 (2010), also centred on a pilgrimage to Lhasa. Where the guilt in Path was on the way back, in Ala Changso 阿拉姜色 it’s on the way there, as a young wife, stricken by an unnamed (but fatal) illness, insists on making a full-prostration pilgrimage to the provincial capital to fulfil a promise she made to the now-dead father of her alienated young son. Though the film isn’t as copycat film-festivaly as Path, it lacks all the behavioural nuances that made River so engaging, as well as a central performance the viewer can latch on to during the inevitable longueurs. Box office was a tiny RMB2.4 million, average for such fare and the director’s most to date.

River gained much from the performance by young Yangchan Lhamo 央金拉毛 as the sheep herder’s daughter through whose eyes the story unfolded. The child role in Ala Changso isn’t on this level, and the character hardly as sympathetic – an anti-social, sulky 10-year-old boy who is the wife’s son by a previous man and who still resents being sent to live with his grandparents by the wife’s husband. In the film’s first half the central character is very much the wife, nicely played by Nyima Sungsung 尼玛松宋 – in quite a change from her wannabe actress in comedy A Style of a Man in Beijing 北漂鱼 (2013) – with a gentle obstinacy as she keeps her terminal illness a secret and stubbornly insists on doing the exhausting pilgrimage. In the second half, however, her position in the film is taken over by the son, and it’s hereon that the already strung-out material really starts to lose traction, as son and step-father try to get along.

This is (or should be) the emotional guts of the movie, but the script by half-Tibetan writer Tashi Dawa 扎西达娃 (Soul on a String 皮绳上的魂, 2016) and Sonthar Gyal himself has little idea where to go and provides no moments of self-discovery beyond the obvious. Despite a likeable performance as the understanding husband by singer Yungdrung Gyal 容中尔甲, 49, in his feature debut, the film’s second half is a long hawl, not helped by needlessly slow editing.

Unlike River which was set and shot in Sonthar Gyal’s native autonomous region in Qinghai province, Ala Changso is set and shot in Tibet itself, though with little increase in ethnic feel. As in River, the photography is good-looking without being over-exotic, marking a seamless change of d.p. from the usual Wang Meng 王猛 to Wang Weihua 王维华 (Knife in the Clear Water 清水里的刀子, 2016, co-produced by Sonthar Gyal’s mentor, Pema Tseden 万玛才旦). The film’s title is a Tibetan drinking song heard at one point in the story.

CREDITS

Presented by Xiaojin Skubla Tourism & Culture Investment (CN).

Script: Tashi Dawa, Sonthar Gyal. Photography: Wang Weihua. Editing: Tsering Wangshug, Sangdak Jyab. Music: Yang Yong. Art direction: Tsering Dondrup, Taktse Dondrup. Sound: Li Cheng, Li Tao, Wu Wei.

Cast: Yungdrung Gyal (Dorje), Nyima Sungsung (Drolma), Sechok Gyal (Norbu), Kimba (Dandar), Liao Xi (hospital doctor), Guru Tsedan, Zhang Wenqing, Danba Wangmo, Pebma Jyid, Zamgmo, Tsewang, Lhundrub.

Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Competition), 23 Jun 2018.

Release: China, 26 Oct 2018.