The Wig
戴假发的人
China/Hong Kong, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 119 mins.
Director: Dong Yue 董越.
Rating: 6/10.
Huang Xiaoming gives a strong, atypical performance as a lawyer-with-a-secret, but his role in the psycho-drama is often undercut by an untidy, over-embellished script.
STORY
Wuhan city, Hubei province, central China, 2002. Meng Zhong (Huang Xiaoming) is formally interviewed by a panel of three to become a lawyer. They remind him of how he sat the Judicial Exam four times and ask him why he wants to become a lawyer. He says, to help people. 23 Sep 2020. Meng Zhong is a successful lawyer who’s just won a big case against a construction company on behalf of its workers; his colleague (Lv Xin) admires the fact that, despite working round the clock, Meng Zhong still takes on legal-aid cases. His latest involves under-aged rape victim Xiaonan (Hu Xiaoran), whose mother, Huang Fen (Huang Lu), has raised her on her own since the father left them. Xiaonan is still in shock and won’t talk about the event when Meng Zhong visits her and her mother in their dingy flat. (As his onetime childhood friend Zhao Si [Chen Chuankai] partly tells it, when Meng Zhong was young his father [Li Congxi], who came from the north, had been forced to work in a factory when his family had lost everything. After an injury at work, he had raised Meng Zhong on his own and started a cobbler’s business. Meng Zhong had not been naturally clever and had got into university through sheer hard work. In 1998, after graduating, he had taken the Judicial Exam for the first time and had failed by only one mark. In 1999 he had re-taken it and again failed, but this time by 25 marks. After taking a job as a night taxi driver and studying during the day, he took the exam a third time in 2000, failing by 80 marks. After that, Meng Zhong had attempted suicide and his father, who’d had so much hope for him, had castigated him as “useless rubbish”. Meng Zhong had carried on as a taxi driver and one night had picked up a drunk who’d told him to just drive around.) On the morning of 29 Sep Meng Zhong follows around a young woman in a long red wig and flashy sunglasses. Finally she confronts him in an amusement arcade and introduces herself as Wei Xian (Wang Yinglu). She invites him to get drunk with her, runs up a RMB7,000 bill at a quiet bar, and then leaves. Next day Meng Zhong visits the hotel room where Xiaonan was allegedly raped but the manager (Yan Weidong) refuses to release the security video. Meng Zhong suspects the manager is shielding the suspect and bribes a security guard (Chang Jiahao) to help him. He later meets Wei Xian for more expensive drinks. (With the meter rising, Meng Zhong had tried to wake up his drunken passenger and found he had little cash on him. He had angrily dragged him out of the taxi and beaten him up in the rain. When the man had abused him, like his own father, Meng Zhong had pushed him down the muddy slope of a river bank.) Meng Zhong is told by the police that they are still investigating the rape case. He then gets a call that Wei Xian is being held in a detention centre and given his name as her lawyer. He pays her fine and drives her back to her flat; but when she makes a sexual move on him, he abruptly leaves. (Meng Zhong had inspected a body at a mortuary to check whether it was the one announced on the news. It was, indeed, his passenger from that night, minus a hairpiece the dead man had been wearing. On 30 Mar 2002, tortured by guilt over the dead man, Meng Zhong had sat the Judicial Exam for a fourth time and had failed again. His father had finally got him a job at a factory.) The hotel security guard gives Meng Zhong the security video, which reveals that the suspect is Liu Aimin (Zhou Bin), a property developer who has a stake in the hotel and is also heavily involved in school charity work. Meng Zhong discovers that the woman who brought Xiaonan to the hotel room was Liu Aimin’s mistress, Zhou Yan (Li Qian), who had befriended the impoverished Huang Fen and offered to be Xiaonan’s godmother. Meng Zhong confronts Zhou Yan with the facts but then finds himself threatened by Liu Aimin’s people. Meanwhile, Xiaonan attempts suicide, and Wei Xian offers to help Huang Fen calm the girl down.
REVIEW
A strong, atypical performance by the usually pin-uppy Huang Xiaoming 黄晓明, plus plenty of nicely-shot noirish atmosphere, isn’t enough to sustain The Wig 戴假发的人, a dark psycho-drama centred on a lawyer-with-a-secret that has an impressive first hour but a much less impressive second one. Shot in late 2020 but only released in Nov 2024, this second feature by Shandong-born writer-director Dong Yue 董越, now 48, isn’t as overwhelmed by relentlessly moody visuals as was his debut movie, crime drama The Looming Storm 暴雪将至 (2017), but it still asks too much of the viewer with its over-embellished plot and way too overwrought final 20 minutes. The result hardly made a squeak at the Mainland box office, taking a tiny RMB4.2 million, much less than even Storm’s meh RMB27 million.
Also hailing from Shandong, Huang, now 47, is a generally agreeble screen presence who’s too often been content to ride on his good looks or firm jaw-line. He first stretched himself as the rough, tough bandit leader in WW2 black comedy An Inaccurate Memoir 匹夫 (2012) and then showed more subtle acting skills in American Dreams in China 中国合伙人 (2013) as the one of the three friends who emerges as the real businessman. After that it wasn’t until Xuan Zang 大唐玄奘 (2016), as the titular Buddhist monk, that he really tried to stretch himself again; and since then, with the exception of a strong performance in the very fine Forever Young 无问西东 (shot in 2012 but only released in Jan 2018), he’s made considerably less movies and largely action/war dramas (The Bravest 烈火英雄, 2019; The Volunteers: To the War 志愿军 雄兵出击, 2023). The Wig was clearly an attempt by Huang at the time to expand his range in a dramatically challenging role.
From that perspective the film is a success: as the working-class boy who got through university by sheer hard work rather than any innate cleverness, and who always dreamed of being a lawyer “to help people”, Huang is utterly convincing, both in flashbacks to his sweaty, scruffy-haired youth and in the present as a balding, middle-aged lawyer in a neat suit. Huang plays the role in a very internalised way – especially in present-day scenes, where he’s cool and buttoned-down – though still manages to give small clues as to his real feelings. But as the viewer learns, Meng Zhong (Huang) is a lawyer with a secret that goes back 20 years, one that resurfaces as he takes on the legal-aid case of an under-age rape by a powerful businessman.
This basically simple plot is embellished with loads of psycho-drama and noirish paranoia – and it’s in this respect, rather than in Huang’s performance, that the film is more problematic. Dong’s screenplay ties itself up in knots that are often quite unnecessary and also structurally harmful, with copious flashbacks charting Meng Zhong’s struggles to pass the Judicial Exam and meet his working-class father’s expectations. Inbetween multiple attempts to pass the exam, Meng Zhong works as a night cabbie, frequently ferrying drunks and other flotsam around, and it’s during one rainy night that he picks up an aggressive (wig-wearing) drunk with whom he becomes fatally entangled.
Such flashback sequences are always powerfully mounted, strikingly shot by d.p. Deng Xu 邓旭 (Love Can’t Be Said 一直一直都很喜欢你, 2022), and can’t be faulted on their own. But they ultimately get in the way of the film developing a dramatic architecture that will draw the viewer into Meng Zhong’s present-day plight. Structurally, too, Dong’s script is often untidy: Meng Zhong’s childhood pal, Zhao Si, who later becomes a pivotal figure, is unclearly drawn for most of the film; and the present-day rape-case plot often does battle with the flashback sequences for the viewer’s emotional involvement. In addition, the mystery woman in Meng Zhong’s life, though confidently played by Sichuan-born Wang Yinglu 王影璐 – then 20, and at the start of her career, but since known for The Woman in the Storm 我经过风暴 (2023) and especially for Welcome to My Side 欢迎来到我身边 (2024) – almost seems like a character from another movie. In short, Dong’s screenplay and direction are way too full of distractions that tend to diminish rather than enhance Huang’s central performance.
Music by Wang Yubo 王宇波 is largely electronic atmospherics that build tension and foreboding, as well as underpinning the moody visuals by Deng (who went on to shoot Dong’s episode in Covid drama Ode to the Spring 你是我的春天, 2022). Though the film’s second hour could easily lose 10-15 minutes, as little new is brought to the table, the film as a whole has an oppressive, often creepy atmosphere – especially in present-day scenes centred on the rape case – that’s effective, and carefully maintained by Dong. Only during the final 20 minutes does the whole pot boil over, straining credibility and overdoing the violence. There’s a nice flashback twist at the end; but another revelation (about the relationship between Meng Zhong and the mystery woman) would have been more effectively revealed about an hour earlier.
Apart from Huang and Wang, none of the other players has a major role. Actress Li Qian 李倩 is briefly notable as a conspirator in the rape case; Huang Lu 黄璐 (a stalwart of auteurist fare) is almost unrecognisable in the low-key part of the victim’s single mother; veteran actor/producer Li Congxi 李从喜 makes a strong impression in only a few scenes as Meng Zhong’s blue-collar father; and Xu Shaowu 徐少武 ditto as the toupee-wearing drunk in the taxi.
An earlier English title for the film was A Cover-Up. The Chinese title actually means “The Wig Wearer”, who plays a much larger role in the drama than his hairpiece. Wang’s character name is Wei Xian 魏娴, which sounds similar to (though not exactly like) the Chinese words for both “dangerous” 危险 and “awe-inspiring” 威显 – a suitable introduction for someone who, in her early scenes, looks like she’s just stepped out of Chung King Express 重庆森林 (1994).
CREDITS
Presented by Emperor Film & Entertainment (Beijing) (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), AMTD (HK). Produced by Haining Sunshine Films (CN).
Script: Dong Yue. Photography: Deng Xu. Editing: Kuang Zhiliang. Music: Wang Yubo. Art direction: Lan Zhiqiang. Costumes: Lin Yuan, Su Changpeng, Song Linwei. Styling: Chang He’nan. Sound: Zhang Jing, Chen Ting, Wu Jiang. Action: Du Zihao, Geng Benling. Car stunts: Du Zihao, Geng Benling. Sound: Zhang Jing, Chen Ting, Wu Jiang. Visual effects: Thomas Lauterbach, Chu Xiaoguang (The Right Stuff Entertainment, Multiple Vision). Executive direction: Chen Chen, Su Yi.
Cast: Huang Xiaoming (Meng Zhong), Wang Yinglu (Wei Xian), Li Congxi (Meng Zhong’s father), Huang Lu (Huang Fen, Xiaonan’s mother), Chen Chuankai (Zhao Si), Lv Xin (Meng Zhong’s lawyer partner), Li Qian (Zhou Yan), Jie Bing (Lin, lawyer), Xu Shaowu (man with wig), Hu Xiaoran (Xiaonan), Zhou Yi (legal-affairs policeman), Cui Jiabin (stranger in noodle restaurant), Gan Yanxing (Li Qian, hotel female employee), Chang Jiahao (hotel security man), Zhou Bin (Liu Aimin), Yan Weidong (hotel foyer manager), Shen Yan (DNA detector), Su Xiaoshen (mortuary attendant), Wang Xi (Zhao Si’s father), Wang Ying (fortune teller).
Release: China, 16 Nov 2024; Hong Kong, tba.