Cherry Goddess
9号女神
China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 99 mins.
Director: Zhang Ming 章明.
Rating: 4/10.
Commercial outing by arty director Zhang Ming is hampered by a bumpy script and a modest budget.
STORY
Xi’an city, Shaanxi province, central China, 2012. Liu Qiang (Zhou Shuai), son of village head Liu Chungui (Liu Hongfang) in Nanzhangpo, White Deer Plain, has come to the provincial capital to take part in STV’s popular dating show Love at First Sight 一见钟情. He’s actually there to promote the village’s main product – cherries – and after being mutually matched with female contestant no. 9, Zhang Linjie (Feng Jiamei), he walks off the show without any explanation. However, the whole thing has been watched by his childhood friend-cum-girlfriend Li Yuzhen (Lv Xingchen) back in the village, and she’s surprised and annoyed by what she sees. Her mother, Duan Caifeng (Jia Xiulan), exploits it as another excuse to attack Liu Qiang’s family; she’s been suing Liu Chungui for five years after he had a road constructed through her family’s grave site. Liu Qiang is a construction worker, but rows with his boss and returns home to Nanzhangpo. Zhang Linjie, who’s actually a post-graduate research student at an agricultural college, arrives in the village with two objectives: as an orphan to discover her roots, as she’s convinced her mother came from White Deer Plain, and to use her knowledge to improve the quality of the village’s cherries. She bumps into Li Yuzhen, who’s immediately jealous of her; but after Zhang Linjie makes it plain she’s not after Liu Qiang, Li Yuzhen lets her stay at her home. The local authorities accept Zhang Linjie’s offer of help, but the problem is that the best soil for cherry growing is on property owned by Duan Caifeng. She also calculates that her project will cost RMB300,000. To mend fences, Liu Qiang pretends Zhang Linjie is his pregnant girlfriend, so that his father will finally publicly apologise to Duan Caifeng. Suspecting there’s actually something between Liu Qiang and Zhang Linjie, Li Yuzhen finally rows with both of them and goes to stay with a dancer friend, Xiaohui (Wang Yiting), in Xi’an. When winter comes, Liu Qiang is alone in the village, as Li Yuzhen is still in Xi’an and Zhang Linjie is working on her doctorate at college. With the arrival of spring comes the cherry harvest, plus other problems to resolve.
REVIEW
Cherry Goddess 9号女神 is the little-known film by indie Mainland director Zhang Ming 章明 that he made between his artistic bounce-back with Folk Songs Singing 郎在对门唱山歌 (2011) and China Affair 她们的名字叫红 (2013) and his return to nebulous over-artiness with The Pluto Moment 冥王星时刻 (2018) and Hot Soup 热汤 (2020). It’s a straightforward, uninflected village romance that proves Zhang can make mainstream material when he wants or has to; but it’s also clearly shot on a budget and is not particularly interesting, despite co-starring young actress Lv Xingchen 吕星辰 (the revelation of Folk Songs Singing). Zhang is also credited as creative producer 监制 on what is basically a puff piece for Shaanxi agriculture that plays very much like a light rural drama from a decade earlier, with a bumpy script (co-written by Zhang’s erstwhile collaborator on more mainstream material, Fan Yiping 凡一平) that’s full of manufactured subplots in its second half. Not slick enough to make any market impression, it crashed with all hands, taking an invisible RMB51,000.
The film’s Chinese title means “Goddess No. 9” and refers to a competitor in a TV dating show who’s actually an agricultural researcher writing her MBA and ends up in the same Shaanxi village – a couple of hours’ drive outside Xi’an, in the wheat-growing White Deer Plain, southeast of the city – as her male match in the TV show. She’s there to research her own roots and help the locals grow nice-tasting cherries, and her presence causes all sorts of problems with the man’s village girlfriend (played by Lv). Set during one year, the film also includes local politics (the man’s father is village head up for re-election), a trashy big-city dancer, the village girlfriend’s mother who hates the village head, and a rather awkward circular structure that begins and ends with the same TV show.
The only real tension holding it all together is which of the two women the male lead will end up with. Otherwise, it’s a generic, updated example of an old-style country drama in which a city intellectual arrives in a village to help the locals with a problem. Hangzhou-born Lv, 22 at the time, can’t really animate the dully written role of the village girlfriend, and she’s consistently outclassed by the more glamorous (though hardly convincing) Feng Jiamei 冯家妹, a Chongqing-born pop singer, then 27, in her first major leading role as the big-city academic. As the man in the middle, Zhou Shuai 周帅, then 28, is handsome enough but not given much of substance to do.
Widescreen photography by Wang Meng 王猛 (China Affair; Hot Soup) is clean and untextured. Chen Guo 陈果 (The Pluto Moment) provides a loyal score that’s not laid on too heavily.
CREDITS
Presented by Shaanxi Sunny Way Culture Communication (CN).
Script: Fan Yiping, Zhang Ming. Photography: Wang Meng. Editing: Zhong Yijuan. Music: Chen Guo. Lyrics: Cheng Qingsong. Vocal: Feng Jiamei. Music supervision: Yan Ning. Art direction: Lin Zhihan. Costumes: Guo Jing. Styling: Lv Wanli. Sound: Liu Yang, Zhang Jinming.
Cast: Feng Jiamei (Zhang Linjie), Zhou Shuai (Liu Qiang), Lv Xingchen (Li Yuzhen), Liu Hongfang (Liu Chungui, Liu Qiang’s father), Jia Xiulan (Duan Caifeng, Li Yuzhen’s mother), Wang Yiting (Xiaohui), Zheng Shaoqiu (Li Longbao), Zhang Yaping (Liu Qiang’s mother), Liu Xinyu (TV presenter), Xie Zhiqing (village Party secretary), Wang Zhanxin (village accountant), Cai Mengtian, Liao Xi (news reporters), Yan Yining, Sun Li (TV show experts), Wang Xuan, Dai Ruqian (Zhang Linjie’s roommates).
Release: China, 9 Jan 2014.