The Victims
黄雀在后！
China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 98 mins.
Directors: Xu Wei 徐伟, He Wenchao 何文超.
Rating: 7/10.
Richly cast, this well-mounted whodunit is 100% plot and procedure but is mostly gripping and also (surprisingly) makes sense.
STORY
Gangtian city, somewhere in Fujian province, eastern China, 12 Jun 2010. On a rainy evening police detective Yuan Wenshan (Feng Shaofeng) is called out to investigate a murder at Siskin Villa 黄雀山庄, a hotel-cum-restaurant in the city’s development zone where many people have come to watch a World Cup football match on TV. The manager, Ma (Lv Yiding), had heard a car alarm outside and found a woman dead in the back and a window smashed. He tells Yuan Wenshan he also saw a motorcyclist driving away at the same time; before all this, a woman, Xiao Yazhen (Tao Hong), who had come to Siskin Villa to negotiate her divorce had left the premises, leaving behind her heavily drunk husband, Zheng Wei (Huang Jue), with whom she had had a row. No one else had left the building during that time. Next day Xiao Yazhen tells Yuan Wenshan that a man on a motorbike had tried to rob her on the roadside as she left Siskin Villa; luckily she was rescued by old friend and business colleague Li Hai (Tu Songyan) who was arriving by car to watch the football match at Siskin Villa. The dead woman is identified as Guan Xiuying (Huang Mengying), who worked at a karaoke bar under the name Mary; a female colleague tells the police that Guan Xiuying needed money for something, and also had been seeing a big-spending restaurant chef, Cai Jie (Sun Deqiang). Yuan Wenshan discovers that Guan Xiuying’s ex-husband, Jin Zhiyong (Peng Ziheng), was demanding RMB1 million from her to get custody of their young son. She had arranged to meet him at a hotel near Siskin Villa but never showed up. Yuan Wenshan thinks she was going to Siskin Villa to meet someone to get some money to pay Jin Zhiyong. He then realises, and proves with a simple trick, that her lover was not Cai Jie but Cai Jie’s uncle, Cai Zhiming (Zhao Chengshun), an outwardly respectable government official. After she had tried to blackmail him for RMB1 million, using a recording of them making love, Cai Zhiming had offered Cai Jie RMB200,000 to kill her, and Cai Jie had hired a needy drug addict, Xu Gang (Zhang Haiyu), to carry it out. Realising Xu Gang was the mysterious motorcyclist, the police launch a serch for him. However, he’s later found, almost dead, after a fall from a building. On his mobile phone they find the name Li Hui, who confesses he was actually going to Siskin Villa to propose to Xiao Yazhen, who he knew was getting divorced, and on the way he saw Xu Gang, who was once an employee of his, kill Guan Xiuying and later try to rob Xiao Yazhen. His testimony finally seems to wrap the case up. But Yuan Wenshan is not so sure. For a start, why has someone just tried to kill Xu Gang? And then manager Ma suddenly remembers that someone else left the premises that evening.
REVIEW
Eight years after his directorial debut with Lost in White 冰河追凶 (2016), a deep-frozen serial-killer mystery set in wintry northeast China, Sichuan-born, onetime d.p. Xu Wei 徐伟, now almost 50, reappears with The Victims 黄雀在后！, a procedural whodunit with more twists than a Rubik’s Cube. Actually shot back in 2020 under the meamingless title 烈日之寒 (literally, “The Cold of the Blazing Sun”), it was originally scheduled to be released in Apr 2022 but became a victim, like dozens of films, of the Covid lockdowns; it’s now finally found a slot, ironically less than three weeks after Remember Me 灿烂的她, his third directing gig, shot in early 2022. Both pictures, produced by Beijing QC Media, took some RMB100 million each, no more than a decent amount but more than twice Lost’s meagre hawl (RMB43 million).
As well as taking a script adaptation credit, Xu is credited as co-director with his actress/film-maker wife He Wenchao 何文超, now 41, who’s best known as an actress for her female lead in the arty Trap Street 水印街 (2013) but has also directed a previous feature (lesbian teen crush movie Sweet Eighteen 甜蜜18岁, 2012) as well as three shorts. It’s impossible to say for sure who did what on The Victims, as neither has yet shown a distinctive directing style; but it seems likely that Xu took care of the technical and visual side (which he’s always passed to a separate d.p.) while He spent more time with the actors.
Based on a script by film academic Wu Jing 吴菁 (her first) and Zeng Jiaxin 曾家新, the movie is 100% plot and procedure, without a second of downtime devoted to anything that isn’t strictly relevant. In the fictional city of Gangtian (doubled by Xiamen) in Fujian province, police detective Yuan Wenshan (enigmatically played by Feng Shaofeng 冯绍峰) is called in to investigate a woman’s murder outside a remote hotel-cum-restaurant called Siskin Villa 黄雀山庄. As he patiently pursues one clue to another, one witness to another, the audience is there at his side, and it looks like The Victims is going to be a straight whodunit, without any of the flash or finery of recent examples like Lost in the Stars 消失的她 (2022). It’s only halfway through, when the case seems solved but Yuan Wenshan then wonders whether he’s been looking at everything from the wrong angle, that the film starts to live up to its Chinese title as layer after layer of apparent truth is peeled back. The title is a four-character phrase that literally means “Siskin [a type of finch] in the rear!” and refers to an unseen, or unforeseen, danger lurking in the background.
Given the ultra-procedural structure and the fact that Feng’s face gives nothing away, it’s a credit to all the cast they they manage to give their characters as much depth as they do. In fact, thanks to the smart editing and cross-cutting by Zhou Yuan 周元 (Remember Me) and the mostly atmospheric but effective score by Zhu Yunbian 朱芸编 (Jade Dynasty I 诛仙I, 2019), the film makes engrossing viewing for most of its length, with every “i” dotted and “t” carefully crossed in the dense plot – which is more than can be said for some Chinese whodunits. However, despite the multiple twists that come later, the film could still lose some 10 minutes from its already tight running time, as the (final) ending feels over-stretched by comparison with the rest of the picture.
It would be unfair to single out any actors as they all blend seamlessly into the plot-dominated fabric, though it’s worth noting that veteran actress Tao Hong 陶虹 (A Beautiful New World 美丽新世界, 1999) takes both a creative producer 监制 credit and one of the peachiest roles, gradually assuming a leading place with her usual distant allure. Widescreen visuals by experienced Taiwan d.p. Qin Dingchang 秦鼎昌 (Hear Me 听说, 2009; Warriors of the Rainbow 赛德克•巴莱, 2011; Kano Kano, 2014) are always well-composed and in the service of the screenplay, with umbrous and rainy moments but no overall noirish look.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing QC Medua (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Shanghai Happy Face Entertainment (CN), QC Media (Wuxi) (CN). Produced by Beijing QC Media (CN).
Script: Wu Jing, Zeng Jiaxin. Adaptation: Xu Wei. Photography: Qin Dingchang. Editing: Zhou Yuan. Music: Zhu Yunbian. Art direction: Zhang Lili, Zhang Li’na. Costumes: Li Binbin. Styling: Wang Jiahui. Sound: Zhu Hang, Wang Chong. Action: Wang Jun. Car stunts: Wang Zhenming. Visual effects: Yuan Huatang, Wu Zhen (Beijing Source VFX).
Cast: Feng Shaofeng (Yuan Wenshan), Tao Hong (Xiao Yazhen), Huang Jue (Zheng Wei), Su Xin (He Yuan, Yuan Wenshan’s sidekick), Zhang Haiyu (Xu Gang), Huang Mengying (Guan Xiuying/Mary), Chen Yutong (Zheng Xiaotong), Yang Ye’er (Qiu Jie, female detective), Tu Songyan (Li Hai), Fan Deng (Zhou, headmaster), Chen Gongyuan (Xiaoshu), Huang Xiyan (young Zheng Xiaotong), Liu Zexing (Six), Lv Yiding (Ma, manager), Peng Ziheng (Jin Zhiyong, Guan Xiuying’s ex-husband), Sun Deqiang (Cai Jie), Wang Yi (Xiaohong), Wang Zhenming (Liu Xiankun, moneylender), Wu Yaping (Xu Gang’s ex-wife), Xu Ruosen (Yuan Wenshan’s young son), Yang Zheng (Zhou Jin), Zhao Chengshun (Cai Zhiming, Cai Jie’s uncle), Zhou Mengting (Wang Yan).
Release: China, 3 Apr 2024.