Young Love Lost
少年巴比伦
China, 2015, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 108 mins.
Director: Xiang Guoqiang 相国强.
Rating: 7/10.
Offbeat light comedy set in a factory city in the early 1990s is well cast and played.
STORY
Dai city, northern China, the early ’90s. After leaving technical college, and with no clear career plans, 20-year-old slacker Lu Xiaolu (Dong Zijian) is found a job by his father (Yang Haoyu) as an apprentice in the industrial town’s main employer, chemical processing plant Dai City Tangjing Factory, with the intention of eventually going on to study at the region’s Chemical Engineering Institute. After being late on his first day, Lu Xiaolu is assigned to work in the mechanics team under veteran fitter Niu Mowang, aka Master Niu (Shang Tielong), who knows all the angles in the large community that makes up the factory. Lu Xiaolu also discovers that a beautiful young woman by whom he was earlier entranced is Bai Lan (Li Meng), the factory’s doctor. He makes attempts to get to know her, but she is also fancied by Bi Guoqiang (Li Daguang), the factory’s new publicity director who comes from a well-connected family. When a female employee threatens to commit suicide by jumping from a factory tower, Lu Xiaolu tries to talk her down in order to impress Bai Lan; to his annoyance, it’s Bi Guoqiang who saves the day. However, when Master Niu has a serious accident, Lu Xiaolu helps Bai Lan rush him to hospital. Afterwards, Bai Lan criticises the factory’s corrupt boss, Hu Deli (Liu Hui), for not making a car available. Bi Guoqiang is transferred to a more senior post and stops chasing Bai Lan. After more bribes by his father, Lu Xiaolu is transferred to the electrical department, working alongside handsome Chemical Engineering Institute graduate Li Guangnan (Gong Haibin), a favourite with the factory’s female staff. After giving Bai Lan a lift home on his bike, she invites him up to her flat, where she briefly kisses him and then encourages him to enrol at night school so he doesn’t waste his life at the factory. Another young worker, Big Foot (Li Yang), befriends Lu Xiaolu and Li Guangnan. But then Lu Xiaolu discovers that Bai Lan is attracting the attention of Wang Ming (Zhang Lu), the factory’s handsome new security head.
REVIEW
Shandong-born Xiang Guoqiang 相国强, a director in his early 30s with a couple of shorts behind him, makes an impressively offbeat feature debut with Young Love Lost 少年巴比伦, a period light comedy set in a state-run chemical plant in the early ’90s. Based on the 2007 novel My Youth Gone Wild 少年巴比伦 by Lu Nei 路内 (pen name of Shang Junwei 商俊伟), it’s basically a first-crush story between a 20-year-old slacker who gets a job at the local chemical plant and the ambitious young factory doctor who’s diverted by his boyish charm but is only marking time in the polluted dustbowl. What gives the film its special flavour is the large cast of colourful characters – mostly undisciplined workers and useless management – and Xiang’s quirky approach to the material, which stirs in moments of surreal humour and plenty of larking around into a story set against a drab, industrial landscape somewhere in northern China. It’s a variation on the same formula of, say, The Piano in a Factory 钢的琴 (2010), as well as of many Central European films of the 1960s and 1970s.
The giant chemical plant acts as a microcosm for regional China of the time, full of crumbling state-run enterprises staffed by iron-rice-bowl workers and superiors who are either well-connected or making the most of their privileged positions. It’s a world that is about to change as the country painfully modernises, though no one can see it at the time. When Lu Xiaolu is wangled a job there by his dad, he’s late on his first day at work and assigned to a mechanics team as an apprentice under a crafty veteran. His vague ideas of becoming a salesman or going on to further studies soon play second fiddle to his fascination with the factory’s young doctor, the same girl who’d earlier entranced him on her bike one day. His main purpose in life becomes working his way into her tightly-controlled affections while doing the least he can at work.
Twenty-one-year-old actor Dong Zijian 董子健 – who was so good as the lead in high-school movie Young Style 青春派 (2013) and as an elite pupil in the recent The Ark of Mr. Chow 少年班 (2015), but was so misused in the futuristic episode of Mountains May Depart 山河故人 (2015) by Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯 – brings a winning freshness to the young roustabout who has no clear goals except chasing girls and idling away his time in a supposedly secure job. He has fine chemistry with actress Li Meng 李梦 (in her first leading film role) as the super-cool factory doctor Bai Lan, who seems to exist on another level from the rest of the townspeople – underlined in her opening scene when she’s shown calmly riding in the opposite direction as the locals are gripped by a potential disaster. Scenes between the two play on Li’s ethereal elegance and Dong’s boyish charm as he pursues her against other male competition while she maintains an elegant, friendly distance from everyone.
Though it’s always entertaining in its character detail – and well played by a seasoned cast including veteran Shang Tielong 尚铁龙 (Cow 斗牛, 2009) as Lu Xiaolu’s first boss and Yang Haoyu 杨皓宇 as his father – the script by Chen Jianzhong 陈建忠 is finally too episodic for its own good. The film lacks a properly moving finale, the resolution of some of the characters’ stories is untidy, and at least a couple of episodes could be cut to give the movie a stronger structure. On the credit side, though most of Xiang’s career so far has been in colour correction and visual effects (on which he lectures at Beijing Film Academy), he doesn’t rely on the latter to drive the film. Instead, he subtly adjusts the colour pallette of the movie to create two worlds – the toxic-looking, rundown factory in which the characters live their lives and a cleaner world outside the gates in which Lu Xiaolu pursues Bai Lan’s affections.
The film was produced by the Qingdao affiliate of London-based Design Partner (UK), an international branding and business development company. The original Chinese title means “Youth Babylon”, underscoring the confused emotions of its young male cast.
CREDITS
Produced by Qingdao Design Partner (UK) (CN).
Script: Chen Jianzhong. Final draft script: Lu Nei [Shang Junwei]. Novel: Lu Nei [Shang Junwei]. Photography: Wang Xiaowei, Wang Meng. Editing: Qiao Aiyu. Art direction: Cheng Zuoping. Sound: Luo Jun. Visual effects: Yang Pengju. Executive director: Wang Weikui.
Cast: Dong Zijian (Lu Xiaolu), Li Meng (Bai Lan), Shang Tielong (Niu Mowang), Yang Haoyu (Lu Xiaolu’s father), Qu Fang (Lu Xiaolu’s mother), Mengke Bate’er (boiler-room master), Tang Xiaoran (Du Chun/Little Pout, Guangnan’s girlfriend), Gong Haibin (Li Guangnan), Li Yang (Big Foot), Zhang Lu (Wang Ming), Li Daguang (Bi Guoqiang), Liu Zhongzhe (Chicken), Fu Qiang (Xiaohua), Li Sibo (Ying), Liu Hui (Hu Deli, factory director), Tian Xudong (Liu Meng), Mou Dongjie (San), Zhang Nan (Li).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Asian New Talent Awards), 18 Jun 2015.
Release: China, 13 Jan 2017.
(Review originally published on Film Businesss Asia, 3 Jul 2015.)