Hi Brother

二哥来了怎么办

China, 2021, colour, 1.85/2.35:1, 104 mins.

Director: Zheng Fenfen 郑芬芬.

Rating: 6/10.

Comedy-drama about feuding siblings is similar to the same director’s Go Brother – and slightly better.

STORY

A coastal city in southern China, the present day. Yang Tingfeng (Hu Xianxu) and his younger sister Yang Tingyu (Deng Enxi) are closely attached but always feuding. Their mother (Dai Lele) has recently remarried and their teenage step-brother Li Sheng (Zheng Wei) suddenly turns up at the front door a week earlier than expected. He is neat, orderly and polite, but also firm. The two siblings unite forces and secretly vow to defend their “territory” against the intruder, making him sleep on a sofa. They panic, however, when he sleepwalks during the night and almost climbs over a balcony. The next day Li Sheng wins them over with his cooking and musical skills, and even beats Yang Tingfeng at ping-pong. When Yang Tingyu thinks her brother is getting too close to Li Sheng, she brings home the members of a girls’ choir she sings in, along with its beautiful conductor Lili (Hani Kyzy). However, her plan backfires, so she draws up a “living agreement”, under which Li Sheng is assigned most of the housework so she and her brother can continue to fool around and cosplay. Their mother and her new husband Li Yuan (Chen Xisheng) arrive home a week early, whereupon the children learn that Li Yuan has changed Li Sheng’s residence permit so he can study for the university entrance exam here. Faced with the inevitable, the children half-accept Li Sheng, who privately asks his step-mother whether he can be put in the same class as Yang Tingyu. All five go to the seaside one day and start to bond. But then one day Li Yuan’s ex-wife (Zhang Yufei) turns up at the front door.

REVIEW

After youth comedy Go Brother 快把我哥带走 (2018), centred on a feuding sister and brother, Taiwan writer-director Zheng Fenfen 郑芬芬 returns with the not dissimilar Hi Brother 二哥来了怎么办, centred on a feuding sister and brother who unite to feud with their new step-brother. Where Go, adapted from a popular manga and starring youth draws Zhang Zifeng 张子枫 and Peng Yuchang 彭昱畅, was a very solid success (RMB350 million), Hi, from an original script by Zheng and not helped by a sluggish summer box office, all but flopped with a mere RMB30 million, despite being a slightly superior product. Still best known for her engaging romance Hear Me 听说 (2009), Taiwan’s biggest local hit of the year, Zheng, 51, brings her customarily smooth technique to a movie that loses its way a bit during the final half-hour but isn’t as strung out as Go and remains likeable, if hardly very trenchant.

Zheng’s third Mainland feature after war drama Wan Ding Qiao 畹町桥 (2012) and Go, the film is virtually a one-set play, with almost all the action taking place in the teen siblings’ house that they share with their mother. She has recently re-married and, a week early, her new husband’s teenage son turns up at the front door, throwing the siblings’ tightly organised, ultra-possessive world into chaos. They vow to defend their “territory” against the intruder; but that proves trickier than expected especially when the sister suspects her elder brother is beginning to mellow towards the interloper. Though the film has none of Go’s fantasy elements, it’s underpinned by the same themes of unity within a family and kids needing to find their place in it – both underlined by the well-spotted score of Taiwan composer Nie Lin 聂琳 (documentary Twelve Nights 十二夜, 2013) that, inbetween various classical gobbits, is a series of variations on the popular song There’s No Place Like Home.

Zheng has come up with a script that has enough incident, and shifting loyalties, to keep the central idea afloat, inserting the parents into the mix half-an-hour in, followed by their exes later on. A seaside outing provides a change of pace (mirrored by Nie’s softer, more heartfelt music) prior to things becoming more serious. At its (relatively) darkest point, a surprise song ‘n’ dance provides another change of pace – as well as raising the intriguing idea that the whole film could have worked as a musical – but after that the film finally starts to lose traction, with nothing new apart from a small twist near the end. Fifteen minutes shorter, the film might have deserved 7/10.

The whole thing benefits from strong chemistry between the closely-knit siblings Tingfeng (“Hear the Wind”) and Tingyu (“Hear the Rain”), as played by actor Hu Xianxu 胡先煦, 21, who’s better known for his TV work, and actress Deng Enxi 邓恩熙, 16, who already has an impressive filmography (the lead in Summer Is the Coldest Season 少女佳禾, 2019, but also supporting parts in Last Letter 你好，之华, 2018, and Back to the Wharf 风平浪静, 2020). As the interloper who’s much craftier than he seems, former child actor Zheng Wei 郑伟, 20, holds his own against the demonstrative duo with some clever underplaying. On the adult side, the experienced Dai Lele 代乐乐, 39, is especially good as the ever-smiling mother who knows exactly what tricks her two brats are up to, while Taiwan actor Chen Xisheng 陈希圣, who’s worked several times with Zheng, similarly underplays as her new husband. Uyghur dancer/actress Hani Kyzy 哈妮克孜 (the demon seductress in Soul Snatcher 赤狐书生, 2020) pops up as a sexy choral conductor.

Technical credits are good down the line, with the house cleverly used in a way that never becomes claustrophobic. Like Go, the film was shot in Xiamen, Fujian province. Presumably for reasons linked to the Covid pandemic, filming was in two phases, with the first, starting in Jan 2020, under noted Taiwan d.p. Li Pingbin 李屏宾 and the second, starting in Jun 2020, under Hong Kong-born, US-based Xie Yue 谢粤 [Arden Tse]; it’s impossible, stylistically, to tell who shot what. During a crucial four-minute flashback near the end, the screen ratio inexplicably changes to 2.35:1. The seven-minute end titles include a full-scale musicvideo that’s also in 2.35:1.

CREDITS

Presented by Wanda Pictures (CN). Produced by Xiamen Yuanqi Huyu Film & TV Culture (CN).

Script: Zheng Fenfen. Photography: Li Pingbin (first phase), Xie Yue [Arden Tse] (second phase). Editing: Wang Nan. Music: Nie Lin. Art direction: Du Xiangdong. Styling: Zhang Yingsi. Sound: Gao Yuguang, Hao Gang. Visual effects: Wan Xiaojun (Mind Biz, Mind Click).

Cast: Hu Xianxu (Yang Tingfeng), Deng Enxi (Yang Tingyu), Zheng Wei (Li Sheng), Dai Lele (mother of Yang Tingfeng and Yang Tingyu), Chen Xisheng (Li Yuan, father of Li Sheng), Zhou Qi (ice-cream parlour friend), Chen Duling (ice-cream parlour goddess), Hani Kyzy (Lili), Gao Shuguang (father of Yang Tingfeng and Yang Tingyu), Zhang Yufei (mother of Li Sheng), Zhang Zijian (Wu Qiming), Zhou Zhengjie (ice-cream parlour friend).

Release: China, 16 Jul 2021.