Driverless

无人驾驶

China, 2010, colour, 2.35:1, 100 mins.

Director: Zhang Yang 张扬.

Rating: 7/10.

Ultra-chic drama of intertwined relationships is cleverly constructed but not emotionally engaging.

STORY

Beijing, the present day. Struggling entrepreneur Zhixiong (Liu Ye) meets his first love Xiao Yun (Gao Yuanyuan) after a gap of 10 years when both are rival bidders for a contract; they have a one-night stand, and Zhixiong considers divorcing his wife Changqing (Li Xiaoran), but Xiao Yun is also in another relationship. Lonely deaf-mute teenager Li Xin (Wang Luodan) spies on a womanising car racer, Lijia (Huang Xuan), and then starts spending time with him; each sees in the other something lacking in their own life. Chauffeur Wang Yao (Chen Jianbin), who needs a large amount of money to pay for his wife’s injuries in a car crash, meets wealthy businesswoman Wang Dan (Lin Xinru) by chance; she helps restore his self-confidence and invites him to invest in some shares which have been hotly tipped by another friend, Guo (You Yong), who saved her from suicide after a failed relationship. Over the course of time, these people’s lives intersect and hidden connections are revealed.

REVIEW

Driverless 无人驾驶 is a chic, smart film for chic, smart New China. Cleverly constructed with interwoven storylines, and characters linked in ways not immediately clear, the ensemble drama is smoothly acted by a strong cast – especially Liu Ye 刘烨, as a struggling entrepreneur, and Gao Yuanyuan 高圆圆, as his first love who reappears after a 10-year gap – and beautifully shot in widescreen by Cao Yu 曹郁 (Kekexili: Mountain Patrol 可可西里, 2004; City of Life and Death 南京！南京！, 2009) with a steely precision and lack of tonal warmth that reflects the characters’ lives. It has nicely textured supporting performances from Li Xiaoran 李小冉, as the wife of Liu’s faithless entrepreneur, and Taiwan’s Lin Xinru 林心如 [Ruby Lin] as a self-motivated businesswomen. But it is as cold and uninvolving as a smoothly sculpted piece of stone.

In some respects, the movie is a belated return by director Zhang Yang 张扬 to the subject of his debut, Spicy Love Soup 爱情麻辣烫 (1997) – an ensemble film focusing on everyday relationships – rather than the more festival-orientated later films that also reflected his parallel interest in theatre (Shower 洗澡, 1999; Quitting 昨天, 2001). But Driverless and Soup are worlds apart. Each is absolutely of its age and its maker’s age at the time, with Driverless having none of the youthful freshness and relative innocence of Soup but mirroring in a stylised way the aspirations and emotional problems of a small, yuppified section of China’s contemporary 30-something society. But where recent films like Love in Cosmo 摇摆de婚约 (2010), Go Lala Go! 杜拉拉升职记 (2010) or The Perfect Match 终极匹配 (2009) have delivered ironic comedies, Driverless is very serious – and takes itself pretty seriously – indeed.

That’s fine for a lot of the going: the strong, good-looking cast, mingling in fashionable Beijing watering-holes and soulless modern apartments in well-tailored black clothes, certainly match the movie’s visual style in their performances, and bring a measure of emotion to their characters. (Li is especially good in the wife role, registering much through little.) And there’s an occasional tongue-in-cheek feel to the film – most obviously in a self-motivation class, but also in Lin’s playing – that mitigates some of the seriousness. However, the dialogue in the script by Zhang Chong 张翀 and (Zhang Yang’s regular writer) Huo Xin 霍昕 is uneven: sometimes it’s absolutely spot-on, sometimes it’s either too right-on or just (as in the snowy coda) simply soapy.

The movie’s attraction is not in what it says about relationships in a money-obsessed society – which is not very much, at the end of the day – but in the cleverness of its own construction. In a major gamble which pretty much succeeds, the main story ends at the 65-minute point, with the remaining half-hour largely devoted to rewinding past scenes to show hidden details or revealing background that puts the characters in a new light.

The flimsiest of the interlocking strands is that focusing on the youngest characters – a deaf-mute teenager who fills her lonely life by spying on people with her camera, and a young, hot-rodding womaniser who’s never had a serious relationship in his life. In several respects, it’s the most human and unaffected of all the strands, and benefits a lot from a touching performance by cute actress-singer Wang Luodan 王珞丹, but it effectively goes nowhere, and seems simplistic when compared with the older characters’ tangled lives. Or perhaps that’s the point.

CREDITS

Presented by China Film Group (CN), Stellar Mega Films (CN), Beijing M&Y Centra Media (CN), Beijing Sohu Entertainment Culture Media (CN), Sino Television (CN). Produced by China Film Group (CN), Stellar Mega Films (CN), Beijing Sohu Entertainment Culture Media (CN).

Script: Zhang Chong, Huo Xin. Photography: Cao Yu. Editing: Yang Hongyu, Xu Hongyu [Derek Hui]. Music: Zhang Yadong. Art direction: Li Yang. Costume design: Pan Yingyin. Sound: Yang Jiang. Special effects: Luo Lixian.

Cast: Liu Ye (Zhixiong), Gao Yuanyuan (Xiao Yun), Li Xiaoran (Changqing, Zhixiong’s wife), Chen Jianbin (Wang Yao), Lin Xinru [Ruby Lin] (Wang Dan), Wang Luodan (Li Xin), Huang Xuan (Lijia/Fox Ferrari), You Yong (Guo), Hu Yihu (Dawei), Zhang Yan (Wang Yao’s wife), Zhang Guozhu (Li’s father), Wang Ziwen (Zifeiyu, internet writer), Zhang Ran (girl in Lijia’s car), Chen Ping (Auntie Liu), Huo Qidi (Changqing’s father), Xie Laijun (Changqing’s mother), Hou Yiyi (Zhixiong’s son), Lin Xinyang (Wang Yao’s daughter), Yang Kexin (landlord), Zhao Ning, Lin Zhijing, Wang Li, Lu Wenming, Zhao Yong (car racers), Li Haibin (policeman), Lin Yilun.

Release: China, 2 Jul 2010.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 14 Sep 2010.)