Beating Heart
世界上最爱我的人
China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 93 mins.
Director: Huang Yuetai 黄岳泰 [Arthur Wong].
Rating: 3/10.
Simplistically scripted hospital drama squanders the combined talents of its two leads.
STORY
Chang’an city, somewhere in China, 2005. Two girls are admitted into Jingjiang Chang’an hospital on the same day. One is Ding Yan (Ai Mi), the pampered daughter of the hospital’s general manager, Ding Yiming (Wang Qianyuan), who has a congenital heart disease and has just passed out on a plane. She needs a heart transplant but belongs to a rare RH-negative blood group. The other is Jiang Xiaoyu (Huang Yang Tiantian), a junior high-school star pianist and athlete, who has collapsed from a brain tumour. The hospital’s brain specialist, Gao Jin (Ma Niu), advises Jiang Xiaoyu’s single mother, teacher Ou Lichun (Tan Zhuo), that surgery would be risky and post-operative therapy would cost at least RMB100,000. But Ou Lichun says she won’t just stand by and let her daughter die. After hospital executive Yang Feng (Zhou Tie, discovers by chance that Jiang Xiaoyu has the same blood group as Ding Yan, he and Ding Yiming plot to steal Jiang Xiaoyu’s heart after she’s died in the hospital. Ou Lichun looks after her invalided father (Gong Jinguo), who lives in a flat due for demolition; she suggests he moves to an old people’s home, so she can claim the demolition compensation to pay for Jiang Xiaoyu’s treatment. Though Ding Yan is in a private suite, she and Jiang Xiaoyu get to know each other by chance, and they realise they were once classmates at school. Jiang Xiaoyu initially thinks Ding Yan is spoilt, but later warms to her. When a crazed father runs amok in the hospital while wanting to see a doctor he claims killed his child, Jiang Xiaoyu ends up as his prisoner but Ding Yiming rescues her. Afterwards, Ding Yiming arranges for Jiang Xiaoyu to stay in the same suite with his daughter. Ding Yiming also gets to know Ou Lichun, and offers to pay Jiang Xiaoyu’s medical bill when Ou Lichun’s flat is trashed by a loan shark she owes money to. He later confesses to her that his wife died soon after giving birth to Ding Yan, as at the time there was no one in the village who had the same rare blood type. Ou Lichun is touched by all his friendliness, but then Gao Jin subtly warns her that it would be best if she transferred her daughter to another hospital.
REVIEW
Veteran Hong Kong d.p. Huang Yuetai 黄岳泰 [Arthur Wong] makes another rare excursion into the directing chair with the Mainland-funded Beating Heart 世界上最爱我的人, a lame hospital drama that manages to squander the combined talents of actor Wang Qianyuan 王千源 and (especially) actress Tan Zhuo 谭卓, and ends up as a glorified commercial for organ donation. Huang, 66, has had a notable career as a d.p. on commercial pictures the past four decades (Mr. Canton and Lady Rose 奇迹, 1989; The Soong Sisters 宋家皇朝, 1997; Warlords 投名状, 2007; Bodyguards and Assassins 十月围城, 2009; East Wind Rain 东风雨, 2010) but his handful of directorial outings has been way less stellar, including his last, the kidnap drama Ulterior Motive 别有动机 (2015). Seemingly retired after working as d.p. on the highly enjoyable costume fantasy Legend of the Naga Pearls 鲛珠传 (2017), he’s bounced back, as both director and creative producer 监制, with a potentially interesting drama about life-and-death choices that’s torpedoed by a feeble script. Mainland box office was a nothing RMB7.6 million.
The whole thing is especially disappointing given the potential of the material: a cash-strapped teacher fighting for her daughter’s life, a corrupt hospital head who needs the girl’s heart for his own daughter’s transplant, the different extents to which each parent will go for their children, and the whole ethics of organ donation and trafficking. Alas, the simplistic screenplay by Cheng Yanwen 程嫣雯 (written in 2014, and her first script to be shot) hardly comes close to developing its potential, with workaday dialogue, one-dimensional characters and an apparent desire to hit every generic cliche in the book. In its final half-hour the script throws up its hands and becomes a cheesy crime thriller-cum-race against time-cum-weepie, with cross-border action and a showy cameo by Taiwan’s Wang Dalu 王大陆 (Legend of the Naga Pearls) as an organ trafficker. (Cheng has since had produced the online costume fantasy The Revenge of Flowers 奇花记, 2021.)
It’s all a terrible waste of the talent involved – especially lantern-faced Wang Qianyuan, 50, a veteran character actor who’s been trying to establish himself as a leading man during the past few years and could finally have done so here with the conflicted role of the hospital manager. So, too, Tan, 39, one of the Mainland’s most under-rated actresses (Mr. Tree Hello! 树先生, 2011; The Mahjong Box 三缺一, 2016; Dying to Survive 我不是药神, 2018), in a role she plays with the same fierce conviction as her boxer-fighting-for-her-baby-son in the recent Shallow 出拳吧妈妈 (2021) but here seems to be largely punching air, with her and Wang rarely given a chance to strike any real sparks. As the two girls, Huang Yang Tiantian 黄杨钿甜 and Ai Mi 艾米, 12 and 11 at the time of shooting, and both with some experience, are okay in rather circumscribed roles.
Technical credits do the job without being notable in any way, with Huang using several Hong Kong colleagues including d.p. Huang Haozhong 黄浩忠 (who worked under d.p. Huang on the 3-D action fantasy League of Gods 封神传奇, 2016) and veteran editor Lin An’er 林安儿 [Angie Lam] (who just about makes it all run smoothly). The film was shot three years ago, in summer 2019, in and around Ji’nan and Qingdao, Shandong province. Originally known as Beat Heart 跳动的心, its Chinese title was for a while changed to 你比生命更重要 (literally, “You Are More Important Than Life”) before settling on the present one (“The Person Who Loves Me Most in the World”).
CREDITS
Presented by Shandong Dream Culture Media (CN), Dream International Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Foshan Songge Pictures Culture Media (CN), Yule Pictures (Shandong) (CN), Beijing Idol Interactive Culture Media (CN).
Script: Cheng Yanwen. Photography: Huang Haozhong. Editing: Lin An’er [Angie Lam]. Music: Xu Wuwei, Wang Lisen. Music supervision: Pei Dongfeng. Art direction: Liu Minxiong [Ben Lau]. Styling: Yin Xin. Sound: Jiao Chuanglei, Liu Xu, He Bochen. Action: Jin Binlin. Visual effects: Yin Yong, Gao Rusu. Executive direction: Ying Ying, Huo Yu.
Cast: Wang Qianyuan (Ding Yiming), Tan Zhuo (Ou Lichun), Wang Dalu (Chen Minzhong, organ trafficker), Huang Yang Tiantian (Jiang Xiaoyu), Ai Mi (Ding Yan), Zhou Tie (Yang Feng, hospital executive), Andrew Lane Cawthon (Wilson, surgeon), Zhao Mingyue (Luo Xinhai, police detective), Gao Haicheng (Xiaozhou), Ge Si (Guo Xuejun), Gong Jinguo (Jiang Xiaoyu’s grandfather), Ma Niu (Gao Jin, brain specialist), Wang Lefu (Lin Jiang), Liu Zhen (Huang Zhengyou), Wei Zixin (Jiang Kai, Jiang Xiaoyu’s father), Guo Dianjia (Li Tao), Chen Xiaolong (older Li Tao).
Release: China, 26 Aug 2022.