Wangdrak’s Rain Boots

旺扎的雨靴

China, 2018, colour, 1.85:1, 90 mins.

Director: Lhapal Gyal 拉华加.

Rating: 5/10.

Pleasant but unremarkable tale of a schoolboy’s desire for some wellington boots.

STORY

A village in Tibet province, southwest China, the present day. It is the rainy season and Wangdrak (Druklha Dorje) is the only child in his class who does not have a pair of wellington boots to wear on the way to school. Despite support from his mother Renjyi (Shanma Jyi), his farmer father Khabum (Kimba) refuses to buy him a pair, saying they have no money. He already bought Wangdrak a wind-up jumping frog that other children at school offer to trade with him. One day, out with his best friend and neighbour Lhamo (Pakmo Yangdrom), Wangdrak loses the jumping frog and thinks it’s been stolen by Shamba, a boy in the fifth grade who bullies him. He tells his mother, but neither dares tell his father. When the father is out in the fields one day, Wangdrak and his mother almost succeed in trading a goat skin for a pair of wellington boots from a travelling salesman, but another boy buys them first. When the salesman returns another day, Wangdrak’s mother successfully makes the purchase. Wangdrak proudly wears his new wellies to school, even when doing school sports. The problem is that, now he has a pair, it has stopped raining. This is good news for Khabum and other farmers, as they can harvest their crops in safety. But Wangdrak and Lhamo try to prevent local shaman Aku Shakdor from holding off the rain.

REVIEW

A Tibetan boy’s desire for a pair of wellington boots like the rest of his classmates gets a mildly satirical spin in Wangdrak’s Rain Boots 旺扎的雨靴, a pleasant but unremarkable first feature by writer-director Lhapal Gyal 拉华加, 28, an ethnic Tibetan from northeast Qinghai province, western China, who’s previously made several shorts. Well observed, and largely shot without any arty affectations, it still doesn’t have much to distinguish itself from the mass of other films centred on Tibetan rural life, and would have worked equally well as a short feature.

The script is based on a short story by Tsering Dondup, a satirical writer from Henan Mongol Autonomous County, Qinghai province, who, despite being ethnically Mongolian, has long been assimilated into that region’s dominant Tibetan culture. The story’s slight twist is that, once the kid has got a smart new pair of wellies, it stops raining and he has no use for them. Fed up, he and a neighbouring kid try to spike a local shaman’s plans to hold off a forthcoming storm so the farmers can harvest their crops in safety. The screenplay makes a few sly observations about local superstition and the power (or not) of shamanistic weather rituals, but never develops much dramatic steam. So, too, the tensions within the boy’s own family, comprising a kindly mother (nicely played by Shanma Jyi) and a taciturn father (Inner Mongolian actor Kimba 金巴, the sheep owner in Tharlo ཐར་ལོ | 塔洛, 2015, and hunter in Soul on a String 皮绳上的魂, 2016). The film is at its best when just following the kid around – at school, in the countryside with his best friend, and so on – but that’s hardly the basis for a 90-minute feature. In the title role, young Druklha Dorje manages to be sympathetic while staying refreshingly free of cute.

Supervising producer was China’s best-known Tibetan film-maker Pema Tseden 万玛才旦, who’s from the same region of Qinghai as the director. Lv Songye 吕松野, d.p. on Pema Tseden’s Tharlo, as well as on the indie The Summer Is Gone 八月 (2016) – both processed in b&w – contributes some nice-looking, naturalistic colour images in which the landscapes don’t dominate the story.

CREDITS

Presented by Values Culture Media (CN), Youth Film Studio (CN), Qinghai Kawajian Film & Culture Dissemination (CN).

Script: Lhapal Gyal. Short story: Tsering Dondup. Photography: Lv Songye. Editing: Shakdor Jyab, Teng Congcong. Music: Wang Jue, Dao Rui. Art direction: Tenzin Nyima. Costumes: Palyang Tso. Sound: Sherab Jopa, Wang Shuo, Li Qiyan. Executive direction: Darje Tenzin.

Cast: Druklha Dorje (Wangdrak), Pakmo Yangdrom (Lhamo), Kimba (Khabum, Wangdrak’s father), Shanma Jyi (Renjyi, Wangdrak’s mother).

Premiere: Berlin Film Festival (Generation Kplus), 21 Feb 2018.

Release: China, 7 Aug 2020.