The Chinese Widow
烽火芳菲
China, 2017, colour, 2.35:1, 96 mins.
Director: Bille August.
Rating: 6/10.
Tasteful but low-wattage WW2 drama of a young widow and a stranded US pilot.
STORY
Somewhere in the US, 1942. Jack Turner (Emile Hirsch), a US Air Force captain, is congratulated on a successful mission – the so-called Doolittle Raid of 18 Apr 1942, an aerial bombing of Tokyo in reprisal for Pearl Harbor – and on managing to return from China. He is then debriefed. He remembers the mission suddenly being brought forward when USS Hornet was still 700 miles from Tokyo, as the aircraft carrier had been spotted by a Japanese patrol boat. This meant that, after the raid, the planes would would have to make for China, refuel at an airstrip in Zhejiang province, and then proceed to Chongqing, the KMT’s temporary capital. Following the successful raid, the planes are unable to refuel as a KMT lieutenant (Luo Jialing) mistakes them for Japanese aircraft and turns off the airstrip’s landing lights. As they run out of fuel, Jack Turner and his crew parachute into the countryside. Next morning, separated from his crew, he’s found hanging from a tree by Yingzi (Liu Yifei), a widow with a young daughter, Niuniu (Li Fangcong), who survives by making silk. With the help of village head Kai (Yan Yikuan), she hides Jack Turner in a cave. Japanese soldiers, led by Shimamoto (Tsukagoshi Hirotaka), arrive as part of an intense search of the area for the bombers’ crews; Jack Turner’s crew has already been caught and Kai, who has sworn Yingzi and Niuniu to silence, is executed after refusing to co-operate. Next day Yingzi starts to take food to Jack Turner but, after the Japanese find his parachute, she moves him into the cellar of her house on the edge of the village. The Japanese then discover the cave, along with a shoulder bag. Shimamoto asks the young children at the village school run by Jun (Yu Shaqun) whether they can identify the bag; Niuniu denies seeing it, but Shimamoto is suspicious and later goes to Yingzi’s home and questions her. With no one else – including her in-laws (Gong Hanlin, Jin Zhu) – knowing about Jack Turner’s presence, Yingzi eventually realises the only hope is to smuggle him to anti-Japanese guerrillas in the hills. However, no one in the village will admit to knowing where the guerrillas are; and as the days go by, she and her daughter start to become attached to the young US pilot, despite the language barrier.
REVIEW
A low-key variant on the old chestnut of a westerner finding true love in the Orient, The Chinese Widow 烽火芳菲 is a typically tasteful but rather low-wattage drama by veteran Danish director Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror Pelle Erobreren, 1987; The Best Intentions Den goda viljan, 1992). In his first excursion into Asia, August sidesteps many of the cliches of the genre while still following some of them, and though the film does have an emotional pull by the end it seems almost like a sketch for a much bigger picture. Led by yet another ethereal performance from Mainland actress Liu Yifei 刘亦菲 – soon to be seen, in a curious piece of casting, as Disney’s live-action Mulan (2020) – it flopped on Mainland release with a meh RMB29 million.
Widow started shooting in Hangzhou, south of Shanghai, in Nov 2015 and, by the time of its release almost two years later, August had already completed another movie (55 Steps, 2017). With its suspiciously short running time of 90-plus minutes, some tight, elliptical cutting by Danish TV editor Gerd Tjur, and a relatively small cast, Widow has the feel of a cinematic short story – and not necessarily in a bad sense. The focus stays strongly on the central trio of a stranded WW2 US pilot, a young Chinese widow who shelters him, and her somewhat precocious daughter, with side characters like the widow’s in-laws, a village head and a schoolteacher given just enough time to register but not develop any serious sideplots. (Both the headman and the teacher seem to have suppressed feeelings for her.) August’s innate sense of taste handles the inevitable romance with considerable delicacy, with the result that one hardly expects the two leads to have even a chaste kiss. Other de rigueur sequences like getting round the language barrier and basic cultural differences (by tradition, the widow shouldn’t even let a man enter her house, let alone a western soldier) are also handled in a light way.
One essential problem of the script by US writer Greg Latter – a US actor-writer who started out on action schlockers and later co-wrote August’s young Nelson Mandela drama Goodbye Bafana (2007) and wannabe noir Night Train to Lisbon (2013) – is that the story is told in flashback by the pilot, thus removing any tension over whether he survives his time in China behind the Japanese lines. After a moving return to the present in which the pilot has to confront a wrenching reality, the film then tacks on a further coda, supposedly set 50 years later, in which he pens a letter (whose contents don’t match the off-screen voiceover). Veteran Mainland actress Wu Junmei 邬君梅 [Vivian Wu] originally appeared in this coda; instead, she just receives a thankyou in the end credits.
With a major source of tension over the pilot’s fate removed, the main driver to the drama is simply whether he’s discovered or not. August is clearly more interested in the central relationships rather than making just another WW2 undercover drama, though he acquits himself okay in the action finale and constructs one genuine nailbiter in a sequence halfway through where a suspicious Japanese captain visits the widow at her home. Elsewhere, German composer Annette Focks (John Rabe, 2009; Night Train to Lisbon) contributes an effective, minimalist score, creating atmosphere and thankfully steering clear of orientalisms. Throughout, the widescreen, largely handheld photography by Swiss d.p. Filip Zumbrunn (Night Train to Lisbon; 55 Steps) is naturalistic, and equally free of exoticism.
Aged 30 at the time of shooting, US actor Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild, 2007; Milk, 2008) is fine as the somewhat antsy pilot but there’s not a great deal of chemistry between him and the typically blank-faced Liu, 28. The film is almost stolen by a very assured performance from Beijing-born child actress Li Fangcong 李芳淙, 8, as the mouthy daughter, whose role seems to be to put into words unspoken ideas by the adults. (For some reason her character’s name, Niuniu, is rendered as Nunu in the English subtitles.)
The script is a fictional take on the real-life Tokyo Raid, aka Doolittle Raid, of Apr 1942 as a US reprisal for Pearl Harbor. As the end titles bleakly note, 56 US airmen were rescued and some 250,000 Chinese civilians were massacred by the Japanese in retaliation. Widow is also known under the English titles The Hidden Soldier (in the UK) and In Harm’s Way (in the US). The Chinese title roughly means “The Fragrant Flames of War”.
CREDITS
Presented by Zhejiang Roc Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Paradise Bird (CN). Produced by Zhejiang Roc Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Paradise Bird (CN), Publicity Department of Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee (CN), Publicity Department of Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee (CN), Publicity Department of Quzhou Municipal Party Committee (CN), Publicity Department of Chun’an County Party Committee (CN).
Script: Greg Latter. Original story: Ling Zi, Greg Latter, Bille August. Photography: Filip Zumbrunn. Editing: Gjerd Tjur. Music: Annette Focks. Art direction: Wu Lizhong. Costume design: Dang Yuanyuan. Sound: Zhu Jinchun. Action: Shi Xianglong. Visual effects: Yi Yin-ho (Macrograph).
Cast: Liu Yifei (Yingzi), Emile Hirsch (Jack Turner, USAAF captain), Yu Shaoqun (Jun, schoolteacher), Yan Yikuan (Kai, village headman), Li Fangcong (Niuniu, Yingzi’s daughter), Tsukagoshi Hirotaka (Shimamoto, Japanese captain), Vincent Riotta (James Doolittle, USAAF lieutenant-colonel), Gong Hanlin (Yingzi’s father-in-law), Jin Zhu (Yingzi’s mother-in-law), Gong Tiankuo (Sun, KMT lieutenant), Luo Jialing (Xu, KMT captain), Shu Yaoxuan (village peddler).
Premiere: Danish Film Institute, Copenhagen, 19 May 2017. Public premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Opening Night; Competition), 17 Jun 2017).
Release: China, 10 Nov 2017.