Love Trip
毕业作品
China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 85 mins.
Director: Xu Bin 许斌.
Rating: 5/10.
Average mystery-thriller set on a former leper island has enough individual touches to hold interest.
STORY
Leper Island, off Binjiang, South China Sea, the present day. Yin Hao (Zhang Yishan), a fourth-year student in forensic pathology at the People’s Public Security University of China, has come to the island with his girlfriend Xiaonuan (Ding Ding), a film-school student, to research and make a documentary about the leper colony that mysteriously burned down 30 years ago. As well as killing their two theses with one stone, Yin Hao also hopes to get to know Xiaonuan a little closer. Meanwhile, a boat arrives with wealthy local businessman Ding Zichu (Zhang Han), his wife Su Lan (Yang Kaidi), his younger brother Ding Ziqi (Bai Haitao) and his managing director Liang Xihan (Zhu Yongteng). Ding Zichu has come to find his young daughter Ding Na’na (Li Luofei), who earlier went missing on the island. Everyone stays in an old dormitory building managed by Song (Hai Bo); nearty lives a crazed old woman, Jiang (Mu Liyan), who was a nurse at the leper hospital. During the night, Ding Zichu, who’s been having visions of his daughter, almost jumps off the building before being saved by Yin Hao. Next morning, the half-crazed Ding Zichu throws himself off a cliff after almost being rescued by the other three; the whole incident is filmed from nearby by Ding Ding. Yin Hao thinks Ding Ziqi somehow plotted his elder brother’s murder in order to take over the family company, but then Ding Ziqi’s body is wshed up on the beach, apparently drowned. Yin Hao then suspects the deaths are somehow linked to the fire of 30 years ago and tries to get some background information from shop owner Bangzi (Wang Yilun).
REVIEW
An average mystery-thriller set on an island with an abandoned leper colony, Love Trip 毕业作品 tries to be a bit of everything and ends up as just an okay time-passer. But like his earlier film, period horror Black Mirror 少女灵异日记 (2013), this fourth feature by Mainland d.p.-turned-director Xu Bin 许斌 has enough of interest, and sufficient ambition to transcend the genre, that it never drags – and always looks professional on a limited budget. Needless to say, it made no impression on release (RMB4 million).
The film is basically moulded round former child actor Zhang Yishan 张一山 (the martial-arts-mad teenager in Looking for Jackie 寻找成龙, 2009), who, with his fresh-faced looks recalling a younger Xia Yu 夏雨, is amiable enough as a college student who’s come to the island to do a thesis on the colony’s mysterious fire 30 years ago but is actually more interested in getting his leg over his girlfriend, who just happens to be a film student. Zhang, 26, bonds well on screen with actress-singer Ding Ding 丁丁, 31, in the early comic-romantic scenes, even though she looks considerably older than him; she’s hardly believable as a film-schooler, but then neither is he as as a forensic-pathology student once the bodies start piling up. Like the script, which somehow took five people (including Shanghai-born Wang Ce, Nightmare 午夜凶梦, 2011) to write, other players are solid without being distinctive.
Widescreen photography by Zhang Nan 张楠, who also shot Black Mirror, is above-average and mildly atmospheric; so, too, the music score that is always alert to the many changes of mood. (As on Mirror, the music is uncredited.) The film’s original Chinese title was 隔离岛 (“Isolated Island”); its final one literally means “Graduation Production” – the reason for the two leads being on the island. On the film it’s cheekily subtitled 小暖&耗子荣誉作品 (“An Honourable Production by Xiaonuan & Rat”).
CREDITS
Presented by Hubei Changjiang Film Group (CN), Shanghai Huayu Film (CN), Foshan Xin’ge Film & TV (CN). Produced by Shanghai Huayu Film (CN).
Script: Han Jian, Yang Shiye, Wang Ce, Liu Qiang. Script planning: Zhang Qi [Xu Bin]. Photography: Zhang Nan. Editing: Li Dianshi, Jiang Jun. Music: uncredited. Art direction: Yang Jize. Styling: Xiao Lin. Sound: Yuan Mingzhi. Action: Yang Chengyu, Ma Yulu. Visual effects: Li Quansheng. Executive direction: Wang Yilun.
Cast: Zhang Yishan (Yin Hao/Haozi/Rat), Ding Ding (Xiaonuan), Zhu Yongteng (Liang Xihan), Hai Bo (Song), Bai Haitao (Ding Ziqi), Yang Kaidi (Su Lan, Ding Zichu’s wife), Mu Liyan (Jiang), Zhang Han (Ding Zichu), Wang Yilun (Bangzi), Li Luofei (Ding Na’na), Lv Wensheng (young Song), Cao Jiang (young Jiang), Wei Wenhao (young Liang Xihan).
Release: China, 14 Apr 2018.