Kaili Blues

路边野餐

China, 2015, colour, 16:9, 109 mins.

Director: Bi Gan 毕赣.

Rating: 3/10.

Conventionally enigmatic Mainland indie, enlivened by one technical tour de force.

STORY

Kaili city, Guizhou province, southern China, the present day. Chen Sheng (Chen Yongzhong) is a doctor in a clinic he shares with an older doctor, Guang Lian (Zhao Daqing), and is also a published poet with an anthology entitled Roadside Picnic 路边野餐. He is close to Weiwei (Luo Feiyang), the young son of his half-brother Crazy Face (Xie Lixun), who runs a stall in a fairground and doesn’t properly look after the child. Troubled by dreams about his late mother, Chen Sheng borrows a motorbike and goes to her grave; he discovers that Crazy Face has changed the gravestone without telling him. Hearing that Crazy Face has sold Weiwei, Chen Sheng confronts him, saying he will look after the boy instead. Crazy Face, who has always resented the fact that Chen Sheng inherited the family house, says he’s only sent Weiwei away on a trip to Zhenyuan, where their mutual friend Monk, a onetime gangster with whom Chen Sheng was once involved, has a watch shop. Chen Sheng decides to go to Zhenyuan by train to visit Weiwei and Monk, and Guang Lian asks him to look up an old friend, Lin Airen, she’s been dreaming about recently. On the way, Chen Sheng dreams about the day he left prison after a nine-year sentence in which he took the fall for others. He gets off the train just before Zhenyuan, at Dangmai, and a motorcyclist (Yu Shixue) gives him a ride into the village. There he meets the motorcyclist’s girlfriend, Yangyang (Guo Yue), a seamstress who’s training to become a tour guide, and her friend (Liu Linyan), a hairdresser who reminds him of his late wife Zhang Xi.

REVIEW

A first feature by mid-30s writer-director Bi Gan 毕赣, set in and around his hometown of Kaili, Guizhou province, southern China, Kaili Blues 路边野餐 is a conventional Mainland indie with morose characters mooning around and a kind-of narrative that has to be pieced together from vague clues. Its sole claim to any special attention is a tour-de-force, 40-minute single take that follows the central character – an ex-con now working as a doctor – during his stopover in a riverside village en route to visiting some friends.

The idea seems to be to give a sense of temporal unity to the doctor’s passage through the village, which is meant to be like some kind of dream intermingling his past, present and future. In sheer planning – as the camera follows the doctor on a motorbike, up and down stairs, into people’s homes, on a river ferry, and across a bridge – it’s a considerable achievement, with hardly a glitch. But it has no real sense of mystery or magic, and ends up as just an elaborate technical exercise, adding little understanding of the main character who, despite time spent with him, and hearing his foggy poems on the soundtrack, remains an utter enigma. The same can be said for the whole film.

Typically, performances are understated and largely blank-faced, with the photography by Wang Tianxing 王天行 of Guizhou’s wild and hilly landscape the most memorable thing. Bi opens the film with an obscure quote from the ancient Buddhist text The Diamond Sutra 金刚经 and then shows the film’s opening credits on a TV screen; the film’s main title appears 30 minutes in, just prior to the doctor embarking on his journey.

The original Chinese title means “Roadside Picnic”, the name of the main character’s anthology of poems. References to the culture of the Miao ethnic minority (of whom Bi himself is a member) are scattered throughout the film, though in no meaningful way.

CREDITS

Presented by Blackfin (Beijing) Culture & Media (CN), Heaven Pictures (Beijing) The Movie (CN). Produced by Cine-Correspondence Project (CN).

Script: Bi Gan. Photography: Wang Tianxing. Editing: Qin Ya’nan. Music: Lin Qiang. Art direction: Zhu Yun. Costumes: Lu Zhou. Sound: Liang Kai, Lou Kun. Visual effects: Lai Xuezhong (Blackfin). Poems: Bi Gan.

Cast: Chen Yongzhong (Chen Sheng), Zhao Daqing (Guang Lian, older doctor), Luo Feiyang (Weiwei, Crazy Face’s son), Xie Lixun (Crazy Face, Chen Sheng’s half-brother), Zeng Shuai (Pisshead), Yu Shixue (Weiwei, teenager), Guo Yue (Yangyang), Liu Linyan (Zhang Xi), Yang Zuohua (Monk), Qin Guangqian (Huang San).

Premiere: Locarno Film Festival (Filmmakers of the Present), 11 Aug 2015.

Release: China, 15 Jul 2016.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 11 Aug 2015.)