Manchurian Tiger
东北虎
China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 117 mins.
Director: Geng Jun 耿军.
Rating: 6/10.
Phlegmatic, black character comedy, set in wintry northeast China, overstays its initial welcome.
STORY
A coal-mining city in Heilongjiang province, northeast China, the present day, winter. Xu Dong (Zhang Yu) operates his own bulldozer loading coal at a mine. He’s broke, is married to the heavily pregnant Meiling (Ma Li), and has a young mistress, Xiaowei (Guo Yue). Meiling says that, when she has their baby, Xu Dong will have to get rid of their Alsatian dog Ruyi. Xu Dong tries to help an old friend (Xu Gang), who has a history of mental troubles and considers himself a poet, by getting him a teaching job; but the school’s headmaster (Lu Cunfu) is not impressed. Ma Qianli (Zhang Zhiyong), a businessman who went broke during the construction of an apartment building, is leaned on by Wang Yong to repay a loan of RMB35,000. Not having the heart to sell it for dogmeat, Xu Dong leaves Ruyi at Ma Qianli’s home. There, Ma Qianli’s friends and family – all of whom loaned him money – gather to hear the truth about the dire financial straits he is in. Meanwhile, Meiling finds a dyed hair on Xu Dong’s clothes; she starts questioning his past mistresses (Zuo Shujuan, Wang Xuxu) to find out if they’re involved, but without success. Ma Qianli goes into business with two men (Li Zhengmin, Liu Bing) from a “collection agency” who promise to get his investment back from the unfinished apartment building for a 25% service fee. Xu Dong discovers Ma Qianli killed and ate Ruyi, and goes after him for an apology. Meiling decides she must find Xu Dong’s mistress to avoid a scandal. Meanwhile, things go from bad to worse for Ma Qianli.
REVIEW
Another phlegmatic black comedy by Mainland film-maker Geng Jun 耿军 set in China’s wintry northeast, Manchurian Tiger 东北虎 features many of the writer-director’s regular players but this time led by two name professionals, actor Zhang Yu 章宇 (the squad leader in Snipers 狙击手, 2022) and veteran comedienne Ma Li 马丽, making this his most “commercial” production yet. Shot in and around Hegang, a coal-producing city by the Russian border that’s just north of Geng’s birthplace of Yilan, Heilongjiang province, the film is another exploration of the region’s mordant, deadpan humour in a snow-covered setting. Despite being fractionally more accessible than Geng’s previous output (including his best-known feature, Free and Easy 轻松+愉快, 2016), and slightly more substantial on content, it still has the same faults of over-length, obscurity for the sake of it, and lack of variation in tone and pacing. Though Zhang and Ma are no automatic guarantors of box-office success, it managed only a very meh RMB17 million just prior to Chinese New Year.
Although Zhang, 39, is identified with many indie films (Ciao Ciao 巧巧, 2017; An Elephant Sitting Still 大象席地而坐, 2018), he first gained a wider public in the black-comedy megahit Dying to Survive 我不是药神 (2018) playing a penniless ruffian. There are elements of that part in Tiger, though the character is also very close to his lead role in Back to the Wharf 风平浪静 (2020), a largely silent observer of more colourful characters. A penniless bulldozer driver with a pregnant wife (Ma) and a younger mistress, he has a poet friend who’s just out of mental care and a bankrupt businessman friend who’s not above eating his pet dog when he consigns it to the man’s care. Meanwhile, his wife guesses he has a new mistress and sets out questioning the old ones for information. This is all played out in chilly, snow-covered landscapes where everyone seems to be either on the make, financially struggling, or lonely and bored.
Co-written like Free and Easy with Liu Bing 刘兵 (who cameos as a debt collector), the film just scrapes a 6/10 thanks to the performances, especially by Zhang (who manages to make his character sympathetic) and Ma (who waddles around with blank-faced determination) but also by Geng regulars such as Zhang Zhiyong 张志勇 as the bankrupt but still tricky entrepreneur and Xu Gang 徐刚 as the crazed poet. The widescreen visuals by Geng’s regular d.p., Wang Weihua 王维华, are again immaculately composed, if necessarily greyer and darker than in, say, Free and Easy, and the delicate scoring by Chen Xiaoshu 陈筱舒, largely in the final half-hour, is well-placed and pointed.
Compared with Geng’s previous films, Tiger is much more of an offbeat morality tale, though without becoming at all preachy. But it doesn’t need to be two hours long. A 10-minute-plus scene between the lead and the businessman as the latter’s house is under siege by creditors could be drastically shortened, and a clever restaurant sequence with the mistress should be played more briskly by that point in the movie. From the midpoint on, the film’s deliberate slowness becomes an affectation rather than a strength, as there’s no change in either tempo or pacing. The final half-hour is quite a hawl.
The film’s Chinese title means “Northeast Tiger” rather than “Manchurian Tiger” (which has other connotations). A few brief references to a tiger in a local zoo don’t seem to have much to do with the film’s content.
CREDITS
Presented by Blackfin (Beijing) Production (CN), U.Lan Media Xuzhou (CN), Rediance (Beijing) (CN). Produced by Blackfin (Beijing) Production (CN).
Script: Liu Bing, Geng Jun. Photography: Wang Weihua. Editing: Chen Heping. Music: Chen Xiaoshu. Art direction: Lan Zhiqiang. Styling: Lan Zhiqiang, Ma Zhuoming. Sound: Lou Kun, Zhao Gujin.
Cast: Zhang Yu (Xu Dong), Ma Li (Meiling), Zhang Zhiyong (Ma Qianli), Xu Gang (Luo, poet), Guo Yue (Xiaowei), Zhang Xun (contractor in wheelchair), Yuan Liguo (Xiaozhan), Lu Cunfu (headmaster), Liu Bing (Li, debt collector), Li Zhengmin (Jin, debt collector), Gu Benbin (Xiao’er, idiot), Li Zhongqiu (wealthy man), Gong Zhe (wealthy woman), Wang Xuxu (Xu Dong’s former mistress, with mask), Zuo Shujuan (Xu Dong’s former mistress, with black hair), Xie Yumeng (TV newscaster), Zhang Dachun (old male debtor in group), Sun Shuhua (female debtor in group), Xue Baohe.
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Competition), 16 Jun 2021.
Release: China, 14 Jan 2022.