Our Happiness

相声大电影之我要幸福

China, 2017, colour, 2.35:1, 92 mins.

Director: Zhang Heluan 张鹤栾 [Zhang Luan 张栾].

Rating: 4/10.

Confused comedy with a host of xiangsheng performers fails to transfer the traditional comic art to the big screen.

STORY

Beijing, the present day, winter. Wealthy businessman Guo Hao (Guo Degang) is about to marry his second wife, young martial artist Yu Xuduo (Lin Linqi), to the consternation of his daughter Guo Jialin (Li Xinyun), who thinks Yu Xuduo and her crafty father Yu Dahong (Yu Qian) are just golddiggers. Yu Dahong drives Guo Hao on a shopping expedition to buy a small case for Yu Xuduo as a surprise wedding gift; he leaves it for safe keeping with Yu Dahong, who puts it in the boot of Guo Hao’s car. While dropping the car off at Crazy Club garage for a service, Yu Dahong hears that some shares he invested in have fallen in price. Crazy Club’s owner (Huang Jianxiang), who is going away for a few days, assigns one of his mechanics, Feng Qiancheng (Guo Qilin), to look after the car. Feng Qiancheng is crazy over Guo Hao’s daughter Guo Jialin, though a colleague tells him she’s out of his league, both socially and financially. Nevertheless, he meets her for a drink on her birthday, after which she suggests going for a drive in her father’s car. When Feng Qiancheng drops her off home, the car is broken into and the small case stolen – just before his boss rings to tell him to take extra special care of what is in the boot. Feng Qiancheng, who is obsessed with his personal happiness, is recommended by a work colleague to see a street fortune teller, Master Guan (Zhang Helun), to restore his luck. Master Guan, who is a fake, directs him in a direction where he comes across an unconscious man (Yue Yunpeng) on the floor of a public washroom. The man remembers being hit on the head and passing out but now has amnesia and doesn’t even know his own name. A young man in the street (Zhang Yunlei) recognises him as Yue Qiangnan and tells him he is married. Yue Qiangnan ends up at a plastic surgery clinic, where he has more adventures, and is then put in a car by the young man in the street on the orders of Yu Dahong. As Feng Qiancheng, now joined by Guo Jialin, searches for him, Yue Qiangnan ends up at night in a “haunted” amusement park.

REVIEW

An almost surreal comedy set on the streets of wintry Beijing, Our Happiness 相声大电影之我要幸福 shows how difficult it is to transfer the specialised art of xiāngshēng 相声 (“cross-talk”, a form of northern stand-up comedy, usually between two men) to the big screen. Its Chinese title (“A Major Xiangsheng Movie: I Want to Be Happy”) optimistically announces what it is, as well as being creatively produced 监制 by and starring one of its best-known proponents, Guo Degang 郭德纲. The film is full of pals, as well as alumni from the Deyunshe 德云社 academy Guo co-founded back in 1995, including Yu Qian 于谦 and Yue Yunpeng 岳云鹏, both of whom have had chequered careers on the big screen. Thanks to an almost totally incomprehensible screenplay – by Li Ying 李颖, who previously co-wrote the lame tomb-robbing saga Mystery 秘术 (2014), also featuring Guo – the film plays like a series of unconnected short sketches until all the hidden background is revealed in the final 15 minutes. The directorial debut of Zhang Luan 张栾 (here billed as Zhang Heluan 张鹤栾), it was shot in 2015 but only released two years later, taking a tiny RMB17.9 million.

Beijing-born Zhang, then 34, performed xiangsheng while in the army and later studied under Guo, so he’s obviously au fait with the performance style. But the film, which revolves around the MacGuffin of a stolen wedding gift, never allows the players to develop any sustained screen presence – a key element of xiangsheng – and instead goes for every trick in the book to keep things moving: split screen, sudden close-ups, camera glide-pasts, jump cuts, rapid fades, and even a few seconds of animation for a comic punch-up. In his debut behind the camera Zhang seems anxious to flex his muscles as a technician, maybe because the screenplay doesn’t make much sense if the audience is allowed to think about it.

Guo, then in his early 40s, is okay as the slightly camp big boss who’s about to remarry, Yue (then only at the start of his film career) plays his usual bozo character as an amnesiac maybe involved in the central mystery, and veteran Yu (who was to star in Zhang’s second feature, Song of Youth 老师！好, 2019) is fine as the shady brother-in-law. But it’s actually the two young lovers in the yarn who come off the best, with both actors only in their second movies: Guo’s son, xiangsheng performer Guo Qilin 郭麒麟, then in his late teens, as a humble car mechanic and Li Xinyun 黎心韵, then in her early 20s, fresh and spirited as the big boss’ daughter.

The underlying theme of personal happiness, and the fact that it doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor when it comes to love and well-being, bookends the film but hardly breaks the surface during all the antics inbetween. When the film isn’t bouncing around visually, its technical credits are modest, starting with the photography of wintry Beijing by d.p. Wang Ruitao 王瑞涛.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Yexing Films (CN), Beijing A Films (CN).

Script: Li Ying. Photography: Wang Ruitao. Editing: Yang Ren, Wang Peichong. Music arranging: Shan Yi, Xu Yi. Art direction: Yu Di. Costumes: Hu Mengdi. Sound: Li Ying, Liu Fang. Special effects: Wang Kuosen, Chen Jianping. Visual effects: Zhong Xiaobo. Animation: Qu Yizhang.

Cast: Guo Degang (Guo Hao), Yu Qian (Yu Dahong), Guo Qilin (Feng Qiancheng), Yue Yunpeng (Yue Qiangnan), Li Xinyun (Guo Jialin, Guo Hao’s daughter), Lin Linqi (Yu Xuduo, Yu Dahong’s daughter), Meng Fei (restaurant owner), Pan Changjiang (old man exercising), Liu Wei (hairdresser), Jiang Chao (Jiang Kui), Liu Gang (wedding MC), Xiao Jian (Zhuzi), Huang Jianxiang (Crazy Club garage owner), Hou Zhen (Hou Meimei), Zhang Helun (Guan Bannian/Master Guan), Yan Hexiang (stall owner), Sun Yue (Huo Fei), Shaobing [Zhu Yunfeng] (Jia Dagui), Zhang Yunlei (Jianzui Housai/Skinny Face), Xue Qiang (wedding manager), Li Yakun (Da Lei), Zhang Kefan (fat thug), Wang Da’nan (thug), Wang Yaozong (Ruhua), Mu Dan (Yue Qiangnan’s wife), Gao Yanuo (Zhenzhen, beautician), Li Yanbing (Li Guoqiang/sex-change woman), Ma Bingyu (nurse), Yu Jialu (Jia, doctor).

Release: China, 1 Dec 2017.