(Sex) Appeal

寒蝉效應

Taiwan/China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 109 mins. (Taiwan/China version), 107 mins. (international version).

Director: Wang Weiming 王维明.

Rating: 7/10.

Notable, if over-dense, drama centred on a teacher-student “rape” raises the Taiwan bar.

STORY

Taibei, late 2012. Lawyer Fang Anyu (Xu Ruoxuan), who is current embroiled in a city redevelopment case, is called by Wang Wenhui (Zhou Youting), a student counsellor at National Taidong University, whom she hasn’t heard from in 20 years since they were at school together. Wang Wenhui begs her to take on the case of Bai Huihua (Guo Caijie), 22, who’s studying for a master’s degree in music at Taidong. Bai Huihua had arrived in Sep 2012, en route meeting fellow student Wang Muhong (Huang Yuan), 19, who’d taken a liking to her. Joining the university orchestra, she also became friends with fellow clarinettist Fu Xiaoling (Fu Xiaoyun), and had been attracted by its charismatic conductor, music professor Li Renfang (Dai Liren). Later, she had applied for the job of his assistant, currently occupied by cellist Li Ya (Lai Lin’en). That day, after taking her to lunch, Li Renfang had come on to her back in his office and apparently raped her. Two months later, Bai Huihua had attempted suicide. Wang Wenhui had initially asked Taidong’s law professor, Lin Anni (Jia Jingwen), a member of the Legal Aid Foundation, to provide assistance for Bai Huihua; but when Lin Anni had realised that her husband Li Renfang was involved, she had refused to take on the case. Wang Wenhui had, therefore, called Fang Anyu for help. Though she’s in the middle of a divorce, and a battle for custody of her young son, Fang Anyu accepts, but says she’ll never be able to prove rape. And nothing will happen unless Bai Huihua decides to sue. As Li Renfang is popular among his students, Bai Huihua is ostracised at college when an online newspaper story details the case and Bai Huihua’s suicide attempt. Bai Huihua’s mother (Ke Suyun), a piano teacher, is embarrassed by the publicity and refuses to come down to Taidong. Meanwhile, Wang Muhong physically attacks Li Renfang one day in class, and is almost prosecuted. Bai Huihua visits Li Renfang in search of proof of his affection but he gently rejects her. As a result, Bai Huihua finally decides to sue him for sexual assault. In court, Li Renfang is represented by Lin Anni, who’s decided to stick by her husband and family. But Bai Huihua still can’t decide whether she loves Li Renfang or not.

REVIEW

An ambitious study of how an unprovable teacher-student “rape” case fans out to affect the lives of various other people, (Sex) Appeal 寒蝉效应 marks a notable feature-film debut by Taibei-born director Wang Weiming 王维明, who initially worked as an assistant director to the late Yang Dechang 杨德昌 [Edward Yang] in the early 1990s, followed by a decade making commercials and TV movies. With a strong cast led by Xu Ruoxuan 徐若瑄 [Vivian Hsu] and Jia Jingwen 贾静雯 as the opposing lawyers, and Guo Caijie 郭采洁 [Amber Kuo] and Dai Liren 戴立忍 [Leon Dai] as the music student and her professor – all pushed to their limits – the movie laudably aims to take Taiwan cinema beyond its current comfort zone of local comedies and feel-good dramas while remaining accessible to general audiences. Though it doesn’t quite measure up to its ambitions – due to a dense screenplay by newcomer Xu Kunhua 徐坤华 that needs more screen time to realise its scope – (Sex) Appeal is still an involving slice of adult drama that raises the bar for contemporary Taiwan cinema.

Based on a true case, the movie follows cute music student Bai Huihua, raised in Taibei by a single mother, as she goes to provincial Taidong University in the southeast of the island to take a master’s degree. Falling under the spell of her charismatic music professor, she’s apparently raped in his office one day and two months later attempts suicide. A student counsellor urges her to sue, and calls in an old lawyer friend from Taibei to take the case. But there’s more here than meets the eye, with the conflicted Bai Huihua initially reluctant to sue as she still harbours feelings for the professor.

Starting with the counsellor calling her lawyer friend in Taibei (and then flashing back to Bai Huihua’s arrival at university), the film immediately makes clear that it’s not centred just on Bai Huihua. Xu’s script stirs in a whole host of other sub-plots: the slick, big-city lawyer’s cynical approach to her profession; her own divorce struggle with her husband for custody of their son; her edgy relationship with the university counsellor (a long-ago schoolfriend); the professor’s pragmatic wife (herself a lawyer) who’s tolerated his philandering as payback for dragging him away from his younger political activism in Taibei; the social gap between the middle-class Bai Huihua and her provincial working-class boyfriend, whose sister is a betelnut girl; and two other female students who also have histories with the professor. Thanks to the strong cast, and smooth production values, the film just about manages to do all this material justice, with the trial providing more character detail and revelations. But it still feels like a two-hour movie compressed into 109 minutes, especially with the whole extra subplot of locals demonstrating against a seaside hotel development.

Actress-singer Guo, 28, best known now for her bitchy fashionista in the Mainland Tiny Times 小时代 films (2013-15), acquits herself well in her most challenging role to date as the conflicted Bai Huihua, dialling down her cute side in some moving sequences. Onetime model, singer and sex-starlet Xu Ruoxuan, now 39, also rises impressively to her most substantial role as the hard-nosed Taibei lawyer, both in her many scenes with Guo and with TV drama actress Jia, 40, as the opposing lawyer. Jia’s role is, in fact, one of the most interesting in the movie – legally representing her philandering husband out of a mixture of guilt and family solidarity – and could easily have been fleshed out with a few more scenes. Well cast as the libidinous professor, Dai pushes himself more here than in most other roles.

Strongest among the supports is TV actress-singer Zhou Youting 周幼婷, 37, as the student counsellor, especially in her scenes with Xu as two former friends who resolve old differences thanks to the case. Playing Bai Huihua’s local admirer, 23-year-old Huang Yuan 黄远, who debuted in the disastrous Fantôme, où es-tu? 酷马 (2010), is just okay.

Production values are top-drawer, led by saturated images of provincial Taiwan and its summery/showery landscape by ace d.p. Li Pingbin 李屏宾 [Mark Lee], smooth editing by Wen Zhiming 文志明, and the score by Luo Enni 罗恩妮 which brings some restrained emotion and a sense of architecture to the whole film. The Chinese title literally means “A Cicada in Winter”, i.e. a chilling or mournful effect. In the Mainland the film was released under the title 不能说的夏天 (literally, “The Unmentionable Summer”).

Alas, outside Taiwan and mainland China the film is represented by a misconceived “international version” which premiered in the Busan Film Festival’s New Currents competition on 6 Oct 2014 and which Wang considers his “director’s cut”. Though only two minutes shorter, it’s not a shadow of the Taiwan/China cut, moving certain scenes around, shortening and lengthening others, excising large chunks of the trial (and thereby losing its whole dynamic), concocting a completely different ending, and throwing out Luo’s entire background score.

This version – which scrapes a 5/10 – starts with Bai Huihua arriving by train, instead of introducing Fang Anyu and Wang Wenhui, establishing some drama, and then going into a flashback; throws out a vital scene, 52 minutes in, showing Bai Huihua visiting Li Renfang in a last-ditch attempt for some affection; completely deletes the trial cross-examinations of two fellow students, plus a chief physician who suggests Bai Huihua may be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome; and has a final 10 minutes which develops the story and characters beyond the trial’s outcome. By tiny trims and extensions, this version loses the natural flow and character balance of the original, as well the whole point of the film – how a group of lives are affected by the case, not just two people’s. Overall, it feels even more crowded, with subsidiary characters jostling for room. However, the biggest loss is Luo’s original score; in its place are either arty silences or repeated extracts from the funeral march of Mahler’s First Symphony (in which Li Renfang is shown conducting his students near the start) which brings a very different mood to the whole film.

CREDITS

Presented by Coolie Films (TW), Stellar Mega Films (CN). Produced by Coolie Films (TW).

Script: Xu Kunhua. Original story: Wang Weiming. Photography: Li Pingbin [Mark Lee]. Editing: Wen Zhiming. Music: Luo Enni. Art direction: Yang Chuanxin. Costume design: Chen Yingling. Sound: Xu Zhengyi, Du Duzhi.

Cast: Xu Ruoxuan [Vivian Hsu] (Fang Anyu), Guo Caijie [Amber Kuo] (Bai Huihua), Jia Jingwen (Lin Anni, professor), Dai Liren [Leon Dai] (Li Renfang, professor), Zhou Youting (Wang Wenhui), Huang Yuan (Wang Muhong), Fu Xiaoyun (Fu Xiaoling), Lai Lin’en (Li Ya/Leah), Ke Suyun (Bai Huihua’s mother), Yang Shiping (Lv, chief physician), Liu Liangzuo (Zhang), Lai Bingmei (Wang Muhong’s mother), Xia Yutong (Wang Muhong’s sister), Zhang Kun (police officer in interrogation room), Wang Daonan (dean of student affairs), Lv Deming (head judge), Li Peiyu (Kailin/Karen, Fang Anyu’s assistant), Liu Jinwei (Li Renfang’s son), Lv Manyin (drunken woman on train), Shu Guozhi (train conductor), Tao Hongjing (Hong En/Henry, violinist), Feng Yonglian (cafe waiter), Yu Yuyu (piano student of Bai Huihua’s mother), Wang Min (dormitory supervisor), Ke Xiaotong (Aya, Wang Wenhui’s adopted daughter), Xie Yingjia (Peipei, Fang Anyu’s son), Yin Zhaode (Fang Anyu’s husband).

Premieres: Busan Film Festival (New Currents), 2 Sep 2014 (international version); New Taipei City Film Festival (Opening Film), 12 Sep 2014 (Taiwan/China version).

Release: Taiwan, 24 Oct 2014; China, 24 Oct 2014.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 22 Oct 2014.)