Almost a Comedy

半个喜剧

China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 110 mins.

Directors: Zhou Shen 周申, Liu Lu 刘露.

Rating: 8/10.

The team behind absurdist comedy Mr. Donkey  comes up trumps again, with a fine cast led by Ren Suxi.

STORY

Beijing, the present day, summer. Late one afternoon Mo Mo (Ren Suxi), 29, arrives at the flat of Zheng Duoduo (Liu Xun), a friend since schooldays, to have dinner with him and his flatmate Song Tong (Wu Yuhan); but Zheng Duoduo is still asleep in bed with a girl, Xia Wa (Yu Ao), after getting royally drunk the night before at a birthday party, and Song Tong is still on his way back. Embarrassed, Zheng Duoduo pretends Xia Wa is Song Tong’s girlfriend, though Mo Mo takes some convincing. Meanwhile, Song Tong’s mother (Zhao Haoyan) arrives from northeast China to stay for two days. Downstairs, Zheng Duoduo bumps into Song Tong and tells him his mother is already here. Upstairs, Mo Mo thinks the mother is Zheng Duoduo’s, while the mother thinks Mo Mo is her son’s girlfriend. The two women don’t get on and Song Tong’s mother says she’ll stay elsewhere. While Song Tong accompanies his mother to a hotel, Zheng Duoduo charms Mo Mo. Song Tong returns suddenly and tells Zheng Duoduo he’s just had a call from Gao Lu (Tang Min), who thinks Zheng Duoduo is getting cold feet about their wedding next month. Song Tong has always liked Gao Lun and is appalled at Zheng Duoduo’s romancing of other women. He tells Zheng Duoduo not to give Mo Mo any false ideas, even though Zheng Duoduo insists Mo Mo is just a friend. Mo Mo eventually leaves but is invited back by Zheng Duoduo as soon as Song Tong goes off to sing in his regular bar. When Song Tong returns, he finds Mo Mo in a bath towel and has to pretend she’s his girlfriend when Gao Lun suddenly turns up. After Zheng Duoduo has left with Gao Lun, Song Tong tells Mo Mo the truth about Zheng Duoduo and his forthcoming wedding. Mo Mo is shattered. Several days later, Gao Lun spots Mo Mo on a blind date in a cafe and tells Song Tong that his girlfriend is chatting up another man. After sorting out that misunderstanding, Song Tong ends up spending time with Mo Mo; later, he turns up at the flat she shares with her mother (Sun Mengquan), ostensibly to return something she left behind.

REVIEW

The team behind absurdist period comedy Mr. Donkey 驴得水 (2016) comes up with another winner in Almost a Comedy 半个喜剧, an entertainingly offbeat take on the contemporary rom-com which proves yet again that goofy-looking theatre actress Ren Suxi 任素汐 is one of the finest comediennes of her generation. Like Donkey, this second outing by Zhou Shen 周申 and Liu Lu 刘露, both directing graduates of Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama, is also a satire on human weakness and dissimulation, though played out in the very different setting of young people in contemporary Beijing instead of peasants and Party officials in 1940s rural China. Again part-financed by Beijing comedy troupe Mahua FunAge 开心麻花 – whose satirical values it shares and with whom Zhou has worked in the past – it’s taken some RMB190 million at the box office, hardly a major hit but, like Donkey’s RMB173 million, a respectable amount for this type of non-mainstream comedy.

Unlike Donkey, the film isn’t adapted from a stage play; but it still has the same unmistakeable feel of a well-rehearsed, organically developed production. The idea had been in the minds of writers Zhou and Liu for some 10 years, just after they’d both graduated from Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama in 2004, and the final script, inspired by several characters they knew at the time, evolved from a year of rehearsal and improvisation by the cast prior to actual shooting.

The plot falls into three clear acts and revolves around three distinct characters who’ve known each other since schooldays. There’s bank employee Mo Mo (Ren), an outgoing Beijinger about to hit 30 who’s independent but still hasn’t given up on getting hitched; Song Tong (Wu Yuhan 吴昱翰), a wannabe singer-songwriter from a poor background in the northeast who wants to make it in the Big City; and his flatmate, womanising rich kid Zheng Duoduo (Liu Xun 刘迅), who’s found Song Tong a job in his father’s firm in order to get him a Beijing residency permit. Mo Mo is somewhat spacey, Song Tong the quiet, serious type who rarely shows his feelings thanks to a domineering mother, and Zheng Duoduo a serial lothario who’s about to marry his fiancee, former fellow student Gao Lu, but still gives Mo Mo the impression that he fancies her.

The shifting emotional sands between the three run right through the movie, viewed from different perspectives, all self-delusory to some extent. Mo Mo still thinks she has a chance with Zheng Duoduo, a crush since junior high school; Song Tong secretly likes both Mo Mo and Gao Lu and is appalled by his friend’s behaviour; and Zheng Duoduo just can’t stop womanising or lying his way out of tight corners. The superb first act, set almost entirely in the two men’s flat, piles deception upon deception as Mo Mo arrives to have dinner and almost catches Zheng Duoduo in bed with a one-night stand; the second sees Mo Mo and Song Tong unexpectedly hitching up; and the final act, a tad darker than the previous ones, has various people trying to break up Song Tong and Mo Mo’s relationship for their own ends, as Zheng Duoduo’s marriage to Gao Lu looms. The second and third acts never quite hit the perfection of the first, but still manage to hold the interest as the characters develop.

It’s a complex mix of competing emotions, played somewhere between comedy and drama – as per the Chinese title (“A Half-Comedy”) – which rarely puts a foot wrong and depends totally on its cast to bring the whole concoction off. Apart from her memorable playing of the wheelchair victim in absurdist black comedy A Cool Fish 无名之辈 (2018), it’s the biggest screen role for Ren, 31, since Donkey, and the Shandong-born theatre actress is simply terrific as the unlucky-in-love Mo Mo, blending comedy with tragic emotion and from the film’s very first scene, stumbling to what she hopes will be a romantic dinner date, carving a touchingly funny character.

The two male leads are equally finely balanced, from the quiet playing of Song Tong by actor-director Wu, 33 – who directed the stage and film versions of Mahua FunAge’s Charley’s Aunt riff, Hello, Mrs. Money 李茶的“姑妈”(2018) – to the showier but equally well-drawn performance by Liu, 24 but looking older, as the incorrigible Casanova with a ruthless streak. Supports are all perfectly in tune, notably opera actress/teacher Zhao Haiyan 赵海燕 as Song Tong’s bossy mother, and Shanghai singer-actress Tang Min 汤敏, 23, as Zheng Duoduo’s gullible fiancee. Though the film uses a different crew to that of Donkey, technical credits are all smooth, from the summery widescreen photography by Jin Chenyu 金晨煜 (TVD Women in Shanghai 上海女子图鉴, 2018) to the easygoing guitar score by singer-director Ma Fei 马飞.

CREDITS

Presented by Zhejiang Sili Cultural Communication (CN), Zhejiang FunAge Pictures (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), MaxTimes (Xuan’en) Cultural Development (CN), Xiamen Hualan Duoduo Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Hengdian Films (CN). Produced by Zhejiang Sili Cultural Communication (CN).

Script: Zhou Shen, Liu Lu. Photography: Jin Chenyu. Editing: Wang Yuye. Music: Ma Fei. Song: Ma Fei, Fan Chong, Song Daiting. Art direction: Zhang Lili. Styling: Wang Tao. Visual effects: Yuan Huatang, Wu Zhen (Source VFX). Sound: Yin Jie. Performance direction: Jin Ye. Executive direction: Bi Yongming.

Cast: Wu Yuhan (Song Tong), Ren Suxi (Mo Mo), Liu Xun (Zheng Duoduo), Tang Min (Gao Lu), Zhao Haiyan (Song Tong’s mother), Pei Kuishan (Pei, manager), Yu Ao (Xia Wa), Liu Chenling (Yang Liu, Gao Lu’s cousin), Liang Ying (Yuan), Sun Mengquan (Mo Mo’s mother), Chang Yuan (Mo Mo’s blind date), Liang Qiaobo (himself, music producer in bar), Guan Quedongzhi (young Zheng Duoduo), Fu Weibo (Zheng Duoduo’s father), Wang Kun (Song Tong’s workmate), Li Simeng (Mo Mo’s teammate), Xu Zhaodong (guitarist), Xu Ri (bass player), Li Yang (drummer), Zhang Hanyu (keyboard player).

Release: China, 20 Dec 2019.