You Beautify My Life

你美丽了我的人生

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 90 mins.

Directors: Yan Qingxiu 阎清秀, Yu De’an 于德安.

Rating: 5/10.

Stunningly mounted, Bollywood-like Uyghur musical is let down by a corny, computer-generated script.

STORY

Changji, near Urumqi, Xinjiang province, China, the present day, October. At the invitation of teacher Aliya (Tursunay Ibrayimjan), Academy of Arts postgraduate folk-dance student Nazi (Gulmina Mamat) holds a class in experimental dance at Xinjiang Grand Theatre. In the audience, however, is her former boyfriend Kaisa (Yumit Ubul), whom she’d dumped after winning a study trip to the UK’s Royal Academy of Dance three years earlier. Kaisa has since given up dance as a career and is studying Economics, but has come at the invitation of his close friend, rock musician Aman (Ailizhat Mamatiming), who hopes to get the two together again. Also there are Aman’s three children – teenage son A’erfa (Kamiran Kamil), younger son Diliya (Diliya Akenba’er) and daughter Xilin (Asimai Dilixat). Later, at dinner, Aman asks Nazi if she would temporarily look after his three children, as well as Kaisa’s younger sister Laili (Dildar Rixat), while he’s away on tour and Kaisa is in Beijing for examinations. Kaisa tells her it’s imperative that Laili concentrates on her studies to get into university and not on dancing. However, Laili comes to Nazi’s classes and it’s clear her heart is really in dancing. With Nazi’s blessing, Laili performs at a rock-cafe concert. Alerted by A’erfa, Kaisa flies back in a rage and reveals the real reason why he’s always been against Laili dancing professionally. After being locked out in the cold one night, Nazi collapses but later recovers. She and Kaisa are brought together by a business proposal he has for promoting national dance. But then Bella (Maria Makarenko), a Russian classmate of Kaisa, turns up claiming to be his girlfriend.

REVIEW

Xinjiang goes Bollywood in You Beautify My Life 你美丽了我的人生, a musical romance with ambitions to be more than just another local production with lots of ethnic song’n’dance. Stunningly shot in rich, saturated colours, graced by an elegant female lead in Uyghur dancer Gulmina Mamat 古丽米娜•麦麦提, and featuring some catchy music and choreography amid striking production design and VFX, it often comes very close to a Hindi-style musical – and none the worse for that. Unfortunately, the plot and script are no better than computer-generated, bland links between a series of musical numbers.

Harbin-born TV/theatre director Yan Qingxiu 阎清秀, 56, has worked on several ethnic minority productions, often (as here) with writer-director Yu De’an 于德安, but this is her first major big-screen undertaking, as copious production footage during the end titles makes clear. But from its clumsy set-up – a dancer is asked to babysit a group of kids, including her bitter ex-boyfriend’s dance-mad teenage sister – to the routine dialogue, the script, co-written with Nanjing University of the Arts graduate Xie Peng 谢彭, consistently undercuts the whole production. That’s a shame, as when the movie concentrates on song’n’dance it’s a real pleasure.

Mamat, 32, is a graduate of Xinjiang Arts University who won the second series (2014) of Zhejiang Satellite TV’s So You Think You Can Dance 中国好舞蹈. As an actress she’s limited, but as a dancer she sets the screen alight, especially in the modern dance sequences when partnered with fellow Uyghur dancer Yumit Ubul 玉米提•吾布里, an equally limited actor (like an epicene 1930s romantic lead) but a fine dancer. The rest of the cast, especially the kids, are more natural.

Dance direction, by modern-dance pioneer Jin Xing 金星 – a China-born, ethnic Korean who’s the Mainland’s most famous transgender celebrity (she also cameos near the end as a dance teacher) – is consistently striking, from a rock-cafe apache dance (by Uyghur actress-dancer Dildar Rixat 迪丽达尔•热夏提, 21, playing the teenage sister) to an umbrella number and final love duet, both sung in Uyghur. At only a couple of minutes each, however, all of the musical numbers beg for further development into real showpieces. Throughout, the widescreen photography by Liang Shenghong 梁盛泓 and Wang Liang 王亮 is eye-popping, from the Xinjiang landscape to architectural standouts like the Xinjiang Grand Theatre in Changji, just outside the provincial capital Urumqi.

The Chinese title actually means “You Beautified My Life”, a small but crucial difference from the English one as becomes clear in the film. Mainland box office was only a tiny RMB3.6 million.

CREDITS

Presented by Xinjiang Dasen Culture & Media (CN), Ningbo Film & TV Art (CN). Produced by Xinjiang Dasen Culture & Media (CN), Ningbo Film & TV Art (CN), Xinjiang Art Theatre (CN).

Script: Yan Qingxiu, Xie Peng. Script planning: Zhao Aibin. Photography: Liang Shenghong, Wang Liang. Editing: Chen Zhiwei, Wang Liyuan. Music: Ablikim Ablet, Maiwulan Maimaitiming, Akebai’erjan Abuliz, Yi Zhang, Abulajan Awut, Paruke Duolikun, Dilixat Ainiwa’er. Music direction: Ablikim Ablet. Production design: Mao Huaiqing. Costume design: Alimujiang Adil. Styling: Li Jingchun. Sound: Zhang Yilong, Li Qiyan. Visual effects: Du Keyan. Dance direction: Jin Xing. Choreography: Zibijan Adil. Executive direction: Abdul Aiziz.

Cast: Gulmina Mamat (Nazi/Naze), Yumit Ubul (Kaisa), Jin Xing (Jin, dance teacher), Dildar Rixat (Laili, Kaisa’s teenage sister), Ablikim Ablet (Hali), Ailizhat Mamatiming (Aman), Kamiran Kamil (A’erfa/Alpha, Aman’s teenage son), Diliya Akenba’er (Diliya, Aman’s younger son), Asimai Dilixat (Xilin, Aman’s young daughter), Tursunay Ibrayimjan (Aliya, experimental-dance teacher), Maria Makarenko (Bella), Shalamat Abdurahman (Zhang Qiang, dance student), Niduo’erayi Yushan (young Laili), Abdul Aiziz (doctor), Regat Talihat (drum salesman).

Release: China, 2 Nov 2018.