The Fallen Bridge
断•桥
China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 113 mins.
Director: Li Yu 李玉.
Rating: 4/10.
Gloomy, suspense-less drama about a daughter solving her father’s death lacks any kind of style, and is only watchable for veteran Fan Wei’s creepy performance.
STORY
Huangque city, Sichuan province, 28 Sep 2011. At 13:13, without any warning, one end of the Zhongnan bridge – a major entry point into the city – collapses, killing three people, injuring seven, with one person missing. During the subsequent investigation a human skeleton is found embedded in the concrete of one pier and is later identified as Wen Liang (Mo Xizishi), the bridge’s designer who disappeared eight years ago. In his clothing is a letter to Ju Huaiyi (Li Xiaochuan), owner of Beisen Construction Company, telling him about faults in the bridge’s construction that need to be addressed. Ju Huaiyi cannot be found and soon afterwards is found dead on a building site – either from suicide or murder. Hearing the news, Wen Liang’s daughter, Wen Xiaoyu (Ma Sichun), returns to Huangque from the college where she is a postgraduate architecture student. Accompanied by her godfather Zhu Fangzheng (Fan Wei), a high-up city official who was Wen Liang’s old schoolfriend, she is shown the remains of her father, to whom she was devoted; later she makes a sculpture of him for his funeral. Zhu Fangzheng and his wife Zhang Hui (Gong Beibi) provided a home for Wen Xiaoyu after her mother (Liu Lin) divorced Wen Liang – on Zhu Fangzheng’s suggestion – when he had an affaire with Song Yamei (Wan Qian). Wen Xiaoyu visits her mother but she refuses to come to the funeral as she still hates Wen Liang. On the day she’s leaving to go back to college by train, Wen Xiaoyu is approached by a young man who says he was a construction worker on the bridge and saw Wen Liang on the site the night before he disappeared, arguing with Ju Huaiyi and Zhu Fangzheng in the rain. Afterwards, Ju Huaiyi had claimed that Wen Liang had gone off with his mistress, Song Yamei – which was obviously a lie. The young man, who calls himself Meng Chao (Wang Junkai) and lives in a hovel, refuses to go with her to the police. They argue, with Wen Xiaoyu saying she wants to kill the man who murdered her father. Back home Wen Xiaoyu tells Zhu Fangzheng that is determined to find out the truth about her father’s death. She wears down Meng Chao until he agrees to help her; but he can’t go to the police as he’s been on the run for eight years after killing a magistrate who raped his late elder sister. Wen Xiaoyu pretends to Zhu Fangzheng that she’s gone back to college but actually stays on in Huangque with Meng Chao. She and Meng Chao travel go to meet Song Yamei, who runs a dance club in a nearby town. Song Yamei tells Wen Xiaoyu that Fang Liang was aware of faults in the bridge and had been trying to warn Ju Huaiyi; Zhu Fangzheng had been trying to dissuade him, so Wen Liang began to suspect that Zhu Fangzheng was taking bribes. Wen Xiaoyu is now convinced that her own godfather killed her father, though she has no proof. She visits her home, where Zhu Fangzheng is entertaining his patron, deputy mayor Tang (Fang Li), and pretends she’s been visiting a friend in the city. Later, Zhu Fangzheng is approached by the late Ju Huaiyi’s mistress, Gan Xiaoyang (Zeng Meihuizi), who threatens to send an incriminating video to the police unless he pays her RMB3 million. Their nocturnal meeting is watched and photographed by Wen Xiaoyu and Meng Chao.
REVIEW
The up-and-down career of Mainland film-maker Li Yu 李玉, 48, continues in down mode with The Fallen Bridge 断•桥, a gloomy, suspense-less drama about a daughter belatedly trying to solve her father’s death. Not helped by Li’s styleless direction, it’s a film that can’t decide whether it’s a crime tale that’s also a character study or a character study that’s also a crime tale; in the event, it ends up more as a standard anti-corruption yarn. A wildly unfocused performance by the usually interesting Ma Sichun 马思纯 (SoulMate 七月与安生, 2016) as the vengeful daughter and an eccentric one by young pop idol Wang Junkai 王俊凯 (in his first leading role) as the weirdo who helps her don’t help to give any shape to the film, which ends up being comprehensively hijacked by veteran comedian Fan Wei 范伟 in a creepy performance as the girl’s oily godfather. Surprisingly, the film took an okay-ish RMB233 million on August release, making it easily Li’s biggest box-office success so far – though a chunk of that was due to heavy advance booking by Wang’s large, expectant fanbase.
Bridge is at least an improvement on Li’s previous movie, the mirthless and overblown caper comedy Tiger Robbers 阳光劫匪 (2021), a box-office flop that managed to waste one of the Mainland’s top light comediennes, Ma Li 马丽, in a cartoony tale about some misfits trying to steal back a kidnapped tiger. Most of Li’s films, such as Dam Street 红颜 (2005), Lost in Beijing 苹果 (2007) or Buddha Mountain 观音山 (2010) – often starring her onetime favourite actress Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 – have been centred on women and their emotions. Bridge should be centred on the daughter who’s trying to solve an eight-year-old murder after her missing father’s body is found in the concrete of a collapsed bridge he designed; but the script by Li and her regular creative producer 监制 Fang Li 方励 is unable to create a rounded, believable character for Ma Sichun to get a fix on and the audience to engage with.
A withdrawn, loner student, given to long periods of brooding punctuated by temper tantrums, Ma’s character is hardly empathetic and clearly somewhat disturbed; the script also saddles her with a weirdo murderer-on-the-run who’s only a script device for her to talk to. Apart from the crime elements being poorly plotted, with characters acting illogically at key moments, Bridge is also poorly developed on a character level. Even an actress like Ma (Somewhere Winter 大约在冬季, 2019; Wild Grass 荞麦疯长, 2020; Love after Love 第一炉香, 2020) looks and sounds direction-less here, while Wang just hides behind long hair and scruffy clothes and acts enigmatically.
As a result, Fan’s straight-arrow playing of the smirking godfather stands apart from the leads and, although it’s the kind of performance that the versatile veteran can do with ease, his character still anchors the movie. Even he, however, can’t save the loony final act, which throws all three leads together in an orgy of anger and violence that climaxes in a giant cooling tower set for demolition. The fact that the plot has effectively been resolved by then makes this section seem even more manufactured, and Fan simply joins Ma and Wang is going way over the top.
Among the supporting cast, Zeng Meihuizi 曾美慧孜, one of the few good things about The Pluto Moment 冥王星时刻 (2018), is memorable as a trashy ex-mistress with an incriminating video to exploit, while Gong Beibi 龚蓓苾 pops up, almost unrecognisable, as the godfather’s inscrutable wife. The widescreen photography by Zeng Jian 曾剑 – who shot Li’s Lost in Beijing, Buddha Mountain and her last decent movie, Ever Since We Loved 万物生长 (2015) – has a typically realistic edge, with plenty of handheld work, and some play with light. But its relentlessly grey, desaturated look, combined with the film’s rainy settings, ultimately works against the viewer becoming involved. Art direction and styling by Zheng Chen 郑辰 (Singing When We’re Young 初恋未满, 2013; Tiger Robbers) is suitably realistic and atmospheric throughout.
Set in a fictional metropolis, the film was actually shot in the cities of Nanchong and Mianyang, with dialogue that’s mostly in local Sichuanese dialect. Both Ma (who’s not from the region) and Wang speak in dialect, though Fan’s character speaks standard Mandarin and claims not to understand the local brogue. Curiously, Ma, 34, is 11 years older than Wang, though she plays a character who must be considerably younger than his. As in many of his films, producer Fang casts himself in a playful cameo, here a corrupt deputy mayor. The film’s Chinese title literally means “Break, Bridge”.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Laurel Films (CN), Beijing Cornerstone Entertainment (CN), Alibaba Pictures (Beijing), Emei Film Group (CN).
Script: Li Yu, Fang Li. Photography: Zeng Jian. Editing: Ham Seong-weon, Li Tianming. Music: Dong Yingda. Art direction: Zheng Chen. Styling: Zheng Chen. Sound: Zhang Jinyan, Long Xiaozhu. Action: Luo Cheng. Special effects: Zhong Dehong. Visual effects: A Donglin. Executive direction: Bi Yongming.
Cast: Ma Sichen (Wen Xiaoyu), Wang Junkai (Meng Chao/Zhang Qingdong), Fan Wei (Zhu Fangzheng), Zeng Meihuizi (Gan Xiaoyang), Li Xiaochuan (Ju Huaiyi), Zhao Runnan (Xu Ye, young policeman), Liu Kai (Liu, police detective), Gong Beibi (Zhang Hui, Zhu Fangzheng’s wife), Huang Lu (Zhou Feng, forensics officer), Mo Xizishi (Wen Liang), Zeng Mumei (Lanmei, Gan Xiaoyang’s daughter), Liu Lin (Wen Xiaoyu’s mother), Zhao Qin (young Wen Xiaoyu), Wan Qian (Song Yamei), Fang Li (Tang, deputy mayor), Li Zhencheng (Jianguo, Zhu Fangzheng’s assistant).
Release: China, 13 Aug 2022.