Life Hotel

来福大酒店

China, 2024, colour, 1.85:1, 118 mins.

Director: Liu Bowen 刘博文.

Rating: 7/10.

A strong, characterful cast, led by Huang Xuan and Liu Yan, make this a richly-layered light drama centred on a private nursing home threatened with demolition.

STORY

Liao’an city, somewhere in China, May 2018. After serving 10 years for grievous bodily harm, Li Qingrang (Huang Xuan) is released from prison. He visits his aged father Li Jianhua (Jie Bing) to try to repair their relationship but the latter, on seeing his son, immediately has a heart attack. In hospital Li Qingrang’s sister, Li Qinyan (Xu Xiaosa), and her husband (Wang Fei) look after Li Jianhua, as Li Qingrang has no money. In the street outside, Li Qingrang helps an old lady, Sun Xiumei (Wang Hongmei), who can’t find her way back to back to Life Hotel 来福大酒店, a backstreet nursing home (aka “Cancer Hotel”) whose proprietress is the strong-willed Ma Xiaolin (Liu Yan). Li Qingrang hears that his father – who retired as a teacher after Li Qingrang went to prison and who has no medical insurance – needs heart surgery that will cost RMB150,000. Li Qinyan’s husband says his family can contribute only RMB50,000. Li Qingrang tries to get a job without success and ends up becoming a handyman/general assistant for Ma Xiaolin, who’s taken a liking to him. He learns she’s being pressured to sell the hotel to gangsters as part of a redevelopment scheme, and is the last owner in the area still holding out. From his days before prison Li Qingrang knows the gangster handling things locally, so he visits him. Wang Daji (Dong Baoshi) respects Li Qingrang as his senior, and asks him to find out anything he can use against Ma Xiaolin to pressure her to sell Life Hotel. Meanwhile, the pragmatic Li Qingrang gains Ma Xiaolin’s trust, and she leaves him in charge one night, during when he brings a tricky old patient, Shi (Ge Si), into line. He then convinces Ma Xiaolin to hire two ex-prisoner friends, Chili (Liu Yang) and Hebei (Zhang Zhehua), as a cook and a cleaner. Ma Xiaolin starts on a major renovation of the whole hotel, urged on by Li Qingrang whose plan is to bankrupt her by over-spending and then force her “angel” investor, Liu, not to reimburse her. Wang Daji likes his plan. But then Li Qingrang gradually starts to feel guilty over betraying Ma Xiaolin’s trust in him.

REVIEW

A light drama centred on an unreformed ex-con and a feisty owner of a private nursing home, Life Hotel 来福大酒店 is an impressive theatrical debut by writer-director Liu Bowen 刘博文, a graduate of Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama who’s previously made three online features. The film gains much from the natural chemistry between leads Huang Xuan 黄轩 (typically understated but focused as the ex-con) and Liu Yan 柳岩 (really excellent as the tough but fair boss trying to save her business). With a strong supporting cast of character actors, there’s much to enjoy here, including a putative love story between the two leads that’s never developed in an obvious way. Though it loses some dramatic tension in the final 40 minutes, the film is richly layered enough to engage the viewer throughout. With little to attract younger audiences, it made no impact on the summer box office, with a meh RMB56 million.

Liu’s online features – The Fraud Love Group 骗爱天团, 2016; The Farewell Girls 哀乐好天团, 2017, co-dir. Sang Mutian 桑木天; Listen to You 出走人生电台, 2018 – were all light relationship movies, with only the third taking a less fluffy approach. With former China Film boss Han Sanping 韩三平 as creative producer 监制, a script by co-writer Yao Guanchen 姚冠辰 (Nice to Meet You 遇见你真好, 2018), and the experienced He Keke 何可可 as script advisor, Life Hotel is a significant step up for Liu into mature character drama.

Though it’s obvious from the outset that the film is about the conversion of Li Qingrang (who’s just out of prison after serving 10 years for grievous bodily harm) into a decent member of society, the transformation is done gradually, in a convincing way. In need of a job to pay for his father’s heart surgery, but branded as an ex-con, Li Qingrang finally ends up as a handyman-cum-general assistant to Ma Xiaolin, the strong-willed owner of a private nursing home (dubbed “Cancer Hotel”) peopled by a collection of colourful, ailing characters. But when Li Qingrang finds she’s the last person holding out against a neighborhood development scheme backed by a petty gangster he knows from way back, he agrees to help undermine her in return for some cash he so desperately needs. Not unexpectedly, it’s Li Qingrang’s growing liking for the gutsy Ma Xiaolin (who took a chance on him) and his growing sense of guilt at double-crossing her that fuels much of the film.

The sidelines of the story are richly decorated with characters, from Ge Si 葛四 as crafty old patient Shi, through Ding Yu 丁榆 as the young mother of a leukaemia patient, to Liu Yang 刘洋 and Zhang Zhehua 张哲华 as pals that Li Qingrang arranges jobs for and well-known rapper Dong Baoshi 董宝石 (black comedy The Last Frenzy 末路狂花钱, 2024) as the petty gangster who thinks he’s already a big shot. But it’s the strength of the central relationship on which the whole thing hangs, with 39-year-old former dancer Huang (Blind Massage 推拿, 2014; Youth 芳华, 2017; the smiling psychopath in Moscow Mission 93国际列车大劫案 莫斯科行动, 2023) again giving a master class in minimalist acting and actress-presenter Liu, 43, as in odd-couple rom-com I Like You More 倍儿喜欢你 (2023) with comedian Jia Bing 贾冰, showing she can generate real chemistry to sustain a diffuse story.

The realistic, unstylised photography by Li Linhan 李林翰, who shot Liu’s The Farewell Girls and Listen to You, is all centred on the performances, and the delicate, atmospheric score by Huang Chao 黄超 (Gone with the Light 被光抓走的人, 2019; Five Hundred Miles 交换人生, 2023) is always supportive. Director Liu has a cameo as someone who asks Li Qingrang to keep the noise down in the hospital where his father is.

CREDITS

Presented by Huayi Brothers Pictures (Foshan) (CN), Aha Pictures (Shanghai) (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Huayi Brothers Pictures (CN). Produced by Aha Pictures (Shanghai) (CN).

Script: Yao Guanchen, Liu Bowen. Script advice: He Keke. Photography: Li Linhan. Editing: Liu Bowen. Editing advice: Zhu Lin. Music: Huang Chao. Production design: Du Guangyu. Art direction: Zhang Xiaolong. Costumes: Wang Lin. Styling: Liu Jing. Sound: Wang Xiaoqiang, Wang Gang, Liu Shaosha. Action: Wang Zhenming. Visual effects: Liu Shiyang, Wang Zihua (LGYC VFX). Executive direction: Man Haibo.

Cast: Huang Xuan (Li Qingrang/Li 3qing), Liu Yan (Ma Xiaolin), Liu Yang (Lajiao/Chili), Zhang Zhehua (Hebei), Dong Baoshi (Wang Daji), Li Xiaochuan (Mao), Ge Si (Shi), Ren Luomin (Fu Yanqing), Xu Xiaosa (Li Qinyan, Li Qingrang’s sister), Wang Fei (Li Qinyan’s husband), Wang Hongmei (Sun Xiumei), Liu Ben (Cui Jinlong), Ding Yu (Ma Jingjing), Jie Bing (Li Jianhua, Li Qingrang’s father), Shi Jiankang (Sun Xiumei’s son), Xing Wei (Shi’s daughter), Liu Bowen (complaining man in hospital).

Release: China, 28 Jun 2024.