Land of Broken Hearts
负负得正
China, 2024, colour, 2:1, 99 mins.
Director: Wen Shipei 温仕培.
Rating: 5/10.
Odd-couple rom-com between a young salaryman and his kooky flatmate is largely notable for a screen-grabbing performance by actress Qiu Tian.
STORY
A city somewhere in southern China, the present day. Since his earliest days, Huang Zhenkai (Zhu Yilong) has believed that a team of aliens is filming his life as a 16mm movie. But now, aged 27, he’s just an average office worker, a small cog in a large advertising agency, and he realises he still hasn’t achieved anything special. Deciding on a fresh start, he moves into a flat share and dyes his hair blue. But nothing changes: his life still seems meaningless. He then meets his flatmate who has the main bedroom – spacey Li Xiaole (Qiu Tian), who says she works as a dealer in an underground gambling den. One evening, when they’re both together in the living room, she also says she can see the alien film crew that’s shooting his life. For the camera, each describes the first time they had sex. And then they end up in bed together. The relationship continues, with three strict rules: she never spends the whole night in his room, they never talk about having sex, and they always turn the light out. (When a child, Huang Zhenkai [Fu Ma Yiran] lived in own universe of aliens; Li Xiaole [Qiao Hua] was raised by a charming father [Li Xiaochuan] who was a compulsive liar and also taught her to kick troublesome men between the legs.) Huang Zhenkai starts falling for Li Xiaole and gently tries to normalise their relationship; but she resists, continuing to spin stories about herself that may or may nopt be true. Huang Zhenkai learns she could also be Li Manting, a restaurateuse; Li Xiaoli, a corporate banker; Le Mengdie, a wellness guru; Miss Fei, a model; Li Li/Lily Li, a yoga trainer; Koyueko Lee or Coco Lee, a stylist. One day two debt collectors (Yan Dong, Yan Yang) come looking for her, but she’s not at home. Later, she doesn’t want to talk about it to Huang Zhenkai. And one day he comes back from work to find her gone, her bedroom emptied, with just a picture of a window left behind. Huang Zhenkai is hospitalised with acute gastroenteritis and is visited by his mother (Yi Hui), who brings along a childhood female friend, Suzhen (Liu Enjia), who likes him. Huang Zhenkai thinks he sees Li Xiaole in the hospital but loses her in the crowd. After he recovers, Huang Zhenkai starts to track down people who knew Li Xiaole, trying to construct a picture of who she really was. A male co-worker (Jiang Qiming) at a small supermarket describes how she was flighty, dreamy, mercurial, full of crazy ideas to make money. An independent businesswoman (Zhu Zhu) describes how she knew her for a while before she disappeared one day. And then the two debt collectors tell him that Li Xiaole died in hospital. Or at least, that’s what the aliens’ script says.
REVIEW
An odd-couple rom-com that’s gussied up to make it look and sound more original than it is, Land of Broken Hearts 负负得正 is largely notable for a screen-grabbing performance by relative newcomer Qiu Tian 邱天, 25, a Chongqing-born actress who was the hero’s friend in the Japan-set Before Next Spring 如果有一天我将会离开你 (2021) and was especially good as the bullied loner in high-school BFF drama Reversed Destiny 沙漏 (2024). Looking and playing very like a younger version of Taiwan actress Shu Qi 舒淇, Qiu hijacks a film that’s meant to be centred on lead actor (and associate creative producer 监制) Zhu Yilong 朱一龙, 36, a good-looking but rather blank actor, born in Wuhan, who played the lead in mega-hit mystery Lost in the Stars 消失的她 (2022). That’s fine, as Qiu’s character is interesting enough; the problem is that, when she’s not on screen, Zhu is required to carry the movie more than he (or the script) is able. Summer box office was RMB70 million, okayish considering its less-than-mainstream appeal.
Despite its faults, Broken Hearts is an improvement on the first feature by Guangdong-born writer-director Wen Shipei 温仕培, 35 – the derivative, arty crime noir Are You Lonesome Tonight? 热带往事 (shot in 2018, released in 2021), starring Taiwan’s Peng Yuyan 彭于晏 [Eddie Peng] and Zhang Aijia 张艾嘉 [Sylvia Chang], that had a very film-schooly look and second-hand feel. Broken Hearts is also centred on an odd-couple relationship, and also creatively produced by director Ning Hao 宁浩 via his company Dirty Monkeys, but otherwise it’s something of a new beginning for Wen himself.
The best stuff is in the first 50 minutes – the relationship itself between boring young salaryman Huang Zhenkai (Zhu) and Li Xiaole (Qiu), the female half of his new flat share. Starting as a purely sexual relationship, governed by strict rules, it starts to crack as Huang Zhenkai finds himself genuinely falling for the mysterious, mercurial kook, whose name may not even be Li Xiaole and who feels constrained by none of life’s regular conventions. She’s almost a character from Chungking Express 重庆森林 (1994); but as both a writer and a director Wen is not yet a Wang Jiawei 王家卫 [Wong Kar-wai].
Early on, the point is made that both, though seemingly different, do have one thing in common – a self-loathing that makes them invent other personalities (“neither of us liked the scripts we’d been given”). But when Li Xiaole disappears and Huang Zhenkai sets out to discover who she really was by talking to others who knew her, the film starts going round in circles with little more to add. The surprisingly conventional coda is hardly worthy of the film’s early offbeat promise.
However, the script’s real Achilles Heel is Huang Zhenkai’s over-ripe imagination that his whole life is being shot on 16mm by a crew of aliens, using a script they’ve also written. Where Li Xiaole invents other personalities for herself, Huang Zhenkai invents aliens – and director Wen Shipei, mistakenly, shows them onscreen. The alien film crew, which Li Xiaole also claims to see one evening in their flat, brings them together. But by the end of the movie they’ve become a tiresome, over-worked device that adds nothing: a long, seven-minute sequence near the end, in which Huang Zhenkai tries to exorcise them from his imagination, basically torpedoes the already sinking film.
Supporting performances are okay, notably by Li Xiaochuan 李晓川 (the uncle in The Italian Recipe 遇见你之后, 2022) as the girl’s smooth-talking liar of a father and by Zhu Zhu 朱珠 (crime puzzler Knock Knock 不速来客, 2021) as a female friend with the same outlook on men and life. Shot in late 2023, it’s professionally mounted by Mainland-born d.p. Feng Yuchao 冯宇超 (a NYU Tisch School of the Arts graduate) and editor Kong Dashan 孔大山 (director of wacky mockumentary Journey to the West 宇宙探索编辑部, 2021) but with no special look. The Chinese title roughly means “Two Negatives Make a Positive”.
CREDITS
Presented by Dirty Monkeys (Shenzhen) Studio (CN), Infinite Film (Xiamen) (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), China Film (CN).
Script: Wen Shipei. Photography: Feng Yuchao. Editing: Kong Dashan. Editing advice: Hu Shuzhen. Music: Li Heng. Art direction: Yu Jiarui. Costumes: Liu Xiaoqian, Sun Xinying. Styling: Chen Ziqing. Sound: Li Danfeng, Gao Ruifeng. Visual effects: Zhao Xiao. Animation: Danski Tang.
Cast: Zhu Yilong (Huang Zhenkai), Qiu Tian (Li Xiaole), Jiang Qiming (Domyoji), Zhu Zhu (Lalifa), Wang Yitong (alien film director), Chen Minghao (gastroenterologist), Hu Maotao (Mao, printing-press poet), Li Xiaochuan (Li Xiaole’s father), Xue Xuchun (Hei Dou/Black Bean), Liu Enjia (Suzhen), Yi Hui (Huang Zhenkai’s mother), Fu Ma Yiran (young Huang Zhenkai), Liang Dong (estate agent), Qiao Hua (young Li Xiaole), Wu Mingxuan (teenage Huang Zhenkai), Zhang Xianjing (Huang Zhenkai’s first love), Xu Shaowu (Huang Zhenkai’s father), Li Binyuan (blind street singer), Yan Dong, Yan Yang (debt collectors), Zhang Juncheng (alien leader), Zhou Difei (commercials director).
Release: China, 10 Aug 2024.