Double
双鱼陨石
China, 2020, colour, 2.35:1, 96 mins.
Director: Ding Xiaoyang 丁小洋.
Rating: 6/10.
A film more of ideas than spectacle, this interesting sci-fi mystery makes much of a limited budget and small cast.
STORY
Somewhere in northern China, 2019. A spa club owned by the seedy Wang Wei (Liu Di) is visited by public-order official Auntie Qi (Wen Chunrong) and neighbourhood committee representative Xiaozhang (Han Ruohua). They assure him they haven’t come to check his premises but to ask him about his father, Wang Dezhi (Ding Xihe), who back in Mar 1999, aged 35, had been the driver for a small scientific expedition into the Luogupo desert by university professor Yang Chengming (Guo Xiaoming) and his postgraduate assistant Zhao Qing (Wu Wenjie); fourth member of the group was Wang Dezhi’s friend, Chen Ganquan (Li Kai), a rich kid who had recommended the unemployed Wang Dezhi for the job. (The group had lost contact with the outside world and after two weeks a search of the area had been mounted. All that was found in the sand were a camera and a few other things. Four years later Wang Dezhi was officially declared dead.) As Wang Wei talks to Auntie Qi, Wang Dezhi, still looking 35, stumbles into the spa club; he insists he’s been away for only 20 days, not 20 years. He was found wandering on the edge of the desert by a young couple in a car (Jiang Xing, Rocca). Wang Wei was only 10 when his father left on the expedition, and his mother and father had already been divorced for two years, so he feels emotionally disconnected from the whole story and doubts whether the man is actually his father. Eager to prove his identity, Wang Dezhi says he has a diary to prove he’s been away for only a few days, and sits down to tell everyone his story. (Chen Ganquan’s wealthy father had financed the expedition in hope of the professor finding something that was commercially exploitable. Wang Dezhi had been jobless then, and Chen Ganquan had said it was easy money, just 10 days’ work. After three days’ driving they reached the Luogupo desert, a vast wasteland in which many people had been lost. At the entrance to the area they’d found the skeleton of a seemingly murdered man with a sword in his chest. After six days they had made enough discoveries and, as supplies were low, they’d decided to return early. Suddenly, despite being out of radio reach, their jeep had picked up the German song Lili Marleen, very popular during WW2. The signal had seemed to come from the east – the opposite direction to their return journey – but at the professor’s insistence they set off further into the desert to try to solve the mystery. They had been overwhelmed by a huge sandstorm and their jeep had been damaged. When they’d woken up, they found a complete German U-boat – the famous U-552, notoriously successful during WW2 – buried in the sand. Inside, a gramophone was still playing Lili Marleen, a cup of coffee was still warm, and the captain’s diary was still unfinished; but there were no people or bodies. Zhao Qing had translated the diary, whose final entry in May 1945 said the sub had been crossing the Bay of Biscay, under orders to surrender, when there had been a bright meteor shower in the sky. The professor had then found a small circular meteor that had pierced the hull; on it were carved two fish, in a mirror image. By next morning, after working on the meteor all night, the professor had disappeared. He had soon re-appeared, but his exact double had also been found buried in the sand nearby. Chen Ganquan had seemed to know more than he admitted, and it turned out he also had handled the meteor. Soon, an exact double of him had appeared.)
REVIEW
The slim corpus of Mainland sci-fi films gets an interesting addition with Double 双鱼陨石, in which a famous German U-boat turns up in a desert in northern China and, inside it, a tiny meteor with the power of duplication. If that sounds like a spoiler for the whole plot, it isn’t: Double reveals its primary content pretty early on, and spends most of its running time riffing on the idea before tying it into a father-son framing story set in the present. Intended as a theatrical release – the second by Sichuan-born director Ding Xiaoyang 丁小洋, 38, after his period horror-comedy Thrilling Eve 夜幕惊魂 (2013) – it was finally put directly online (on the iQiyi platform) during the coronavirus shutdown, garnering a good response from sci-fi fans.
One of the best things about Ding’s Eve was its photography and art direction, and in Double he’s equally well served in those two departments by young d.p. Ru Jixiao 茹纪晓 (a Beijing Film Academy grad, director of short Perfect Solo 完美独奏, 2019) and designer Zhang Yan 张炎 (with his clever re-creation of a half-submerged U-boat). Like much in the film, Double only reveals its look gradually, starting as a grungy-looking, quotidien comedy when the sleazy owner of a “spa club” in a nameless northern town is visited by two minor officials asking after his father, who vanished 20 years ago while working as a driver for a small research expedition in the desert. After some massage-parlour jokes and the like, the plot proper kicks off as the father suddenly appears, looking not a day older and claiming he’s only been away for a few days.
Most of the movie is told in flashback – with Ru’s sharp, widescreen photography blooming in the desert – as the father recounts his story to an ad hoc audience of his disbelieving son, the two officials, plus a spa customer and the staff, later joined by a local policeman. Initially, the repeated cutting back to the present, and its light dialogue, seems to disrupt the build-up of the main story, as the group try to solve the mystery of what a WW2 U-boat is doing in the middle of a desert in northern China. But as the story of the “doubles” generated by the magical meteor (with its Pisces decoration) evolves, it becomes clear that the present-day story is just as important, given the underlying themes of the father-son relationship and parental reconciliation.
In that and several other respects, Double isn’t a standard sci-fi drama: several big plot points are left unexplained, and at the discretion of the viewer to answer; the budget is modest; there are no big stars and virtually no VFX; and the overall tone is serio-comic rather than earnest or apocalyptic. Though it may not have held the big screen for 90-plus minutes, on a small one it looks like a very superior online movie, more a film of ideas than of blockbuster ambitions. The three scriptwriters adapted an original work, 星痕 双鱼玉佩 (literally, “Star Trace: The Pisces Jade Pendant”), by Zhutou Da’na 猪头大拿 (pen name of Shandong writer Pang Xiaofeng 庞晓峰, 42) and She Cong Ge 蛇从革 (writer Xu Yunfeng 徐云峰), based on a modern myth first circulated on the popular Mainland forum Tianya Club 天涯社区, to which both writers are contributors.
Performances are lively and varied, with Ding Xihe 丁溪鹤 (the boyfriend in Gone with the Light 被光抓走的人, 2019) as the down-to-earth driver who just wants to mend the jeep and get home, Li Kai 李凯 the cocky fuerdai financier looking to make money, Guo Xiaoming 郭晓明 (with a comically broad Sichuan accent) as the bespectacled prof and, often drawing attention with her focused, low-key playing and Gui Lunmei 桂纶镁 looks, newcomer Wu Wenjie 吴文婕, 23, as the prof’s assistant. Supporting cast in the modern-day sequences at the spa club are likeable. Among the key tech credits, cutting by Inner Mongolian editor Tala 塔拉 is smooth and tight.
The film’s Chinese title means “The Pisces Meteorite”. The desert scenes were shot in the Naimanqi and Baogutu deserts around Tongliao, Inner Mongolia province.
CREDITS
Presented by Sichuan Picapica Entertainment (CN), Beijing Mihehua Pictures (CN), Beijing Hetai Cultural Media (CN), Beijing Hezhong Ruike Film & TV Cultural Communication (CN), Zhejiang Province Yongkang Lingyou Film & TV Culture (CN). Produced by Ningbo Hezhong Ruike Film & TV Culture (CN).
Script: Cao Dele, Chen Zihao, Lin Nannan. Novel: Zhutou Da’na [Pang Xiaofeng], She Cong Ge [Xu Yunfeng]. Photography: Ru Jixiao. Editing: Tala. Music direction: Xu Li. Art direction: Zhang Yan. Costumes: Tang Xin. Styling: Shu Liming. Sound: Song Tengfei, Dong Lin. Action: Ma Ke. Visual effects: Li Peng. Executive direction: Jiang Xing.
Cast: Ding Xihe (Wang Dezhi), Wu Wenjie (Zhao Qing), Li Kai (Chen Ganquan), Guo Xiaoming (Yang Chengning), Liu Di (Wang Wei), Wen Chunrong (Auntie Qi, public-order official), Xu Hejun (young Wang Wei), Han Ruohua (Xiaozhang, neighbourhood commitee representative), She Congge (spa customer), Dengbuliduo (360 spa attendant), Dai Wenyi (spa attendant with Sichuan accent), Zhang Ping (spa attendant at reception desk), Yu Xiaotong (policeman), Jiang Xing, Rocca (couple in car), Zhang Dongcheng (doctor), Chen Guoqiang, Zhao Dongxu (doctor’s aides), Xu Lei (TV reporter).
Release: China, 5 May 2020 (online).