A Place Called Silence
默杀
China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 118 mins.
Director: Ke Wenli 柯汶利 [Sam Quah].
Rating: 6/10.
Serial-killer whodunit centred on a girls’ high school is technically very slick but becomes seriously over-egged in the second half.
STORY
Doma [Douma] city, an island in the Pacific Ocean, early Jan 2006. At Jing Hwa [Jinghua] Girls’ High School, a fund-raising campaign is underway to repair the extensive damage to the school by a tsunami the previous year. During the current rainy weather the ceiling to the main assembly hall is notably leaking but at the moment headmaster An Huaimin (Liu Xiaohai) has no funds to do the repairs that school handyman Lin Zaifu (Wang Chuanjun) recommends. While the girls rehearse for the campaign, in a side room four pupils, led by An Huaimin’s daughter An Qi (Mu Mengjiao), bully and torture the mute Chen Yutong (Wang Shengdi), a special-needs pupil who’s the daughter of young widow Li Han (Zhang Junning), 41, a former accountant now working as school cleaner to pay for her child’s education. The four girls have glued Chen Yutong to the wall, with An Qi accusing Chen Yutong’s mother of “seducing” her father. Other pupils, and a security officer, see what is happening but do nothing. Later, Li Han arrives and cuts Chen Yutong down. That night, three of the bullies – Zhong Xiaoqing (Gu Mingyi), Huang Wenling (Zhuo Yinamu) and Gao Jingshu (Wang Xiaoyunzi) – meet at an abandoned castle near the school; they are brutally murdered by a figure in a plastic raincoat. An Qi, who has been told to stay at home by her father, is not with them. A couple of days later the local police, led by chief detective Dai Guodong (Wu Zhenyu) and his assistants Xiaowen (Aruna) and the gossipy Curry Bun (Wang Chengsi), start to investigate the case of the missing girls, whose bodies have not been found. An Qi is then lured to a secret meeting place by a phoney text message from Zhong Xiaoqing and brutally murdered. During the school’s fund-raising ceremony in the main assembly hall, An Qi’s body is suddenly revealed, strung from the ceiling. Suspicion for her murder falls on Lin Zaifu, who recently lost his teenage daughter Lin Huijun (Xu Jiao), who was a pupil at the school. He had also been reported for secretly videoing some schoolgirls, dressed in a plastic raincoat. He recently moved into the flat opposite Li Han and Chen Yutong. On the same day as the fund-raising incident, Chen Yutong goes missing and Li Han suspects Lin Zaifu kidnapped and killed her. She breaks into his flat but find nothing. After Li Han goes to the police, Dai Guodong arrests a figure in a plastic raincoat but it turns out to be his own runaway son, Wu Wang (Huang Minghao), who despises him. Wu Wang turns out to be a voyeur with an extensive collection of videos of Li Han, Lin Zaifu and many others; it was he who was videoing pupils at the high school. In his collection he also has a video of Li Han physically abusing her daughter.
REVIEW
A remake of the same director’s identically titled film made several years earlier, A Place Called Silence 默杀 is in every respect more more more – a serial-killer whodunit centred on a girls’ high school that whips itself up into a multi-layered frenzy in the second half, seasoned with lashings of visceral violence. A flavoursome cast from across Greater China just about keeps the ship afloat as the script piles on everything from serial murders, voyeurism, and child/sexual abuse to school bullying, spiritual redemption and even hints of Buddhist enlightenment (cittotpāda). It’s a generally enjoyable, if over-egged pudding that’s often effective thanks to slick direction by Chinese Malaysian Ke Wenli 柯汶利 [Quah Boon Lip/Sam Quah] but doesn’t live up to its grand pretensions and finally sinks under its own weight.
Despite all that, the Mainland production has taken a very nice RMB1.35 billion this summer, making it the year’s sixth biggest grosser so far, eclipsing even the RMB1.33 billion of Ke’s first feature release, crime procedural Sheep without a Shepherd 误杀 (2019). A Chinese remake of a much-remade Indian hit, Sheep was billed as Ke’s feature debut but he had, reportedly, already shot the first version of Silence in 2017. Set in Taiwan with an all-Taiwan cast – Ke, 39, was born in Penang, Malaysia, but is based in Taibei – the (officially Malaysian) film took a while to be released, finally premiering in the New Currents competition of the Busan film festival in Oct 2022. Its theatrical release appears to have been further delayed by the embroilment in 2023 of lead actor Huang Jianwei 黄健玮 in a (ultimately withdrawn) MeToo charge – which may have further influenced Ke to remake it as a big-star, Mainland-funded production to secure Mainland release. Whatever the reason, it’s paid dividends.
Ke and his two new co-writers, newbies Wang Zhizhi 王吱吱 and Wang Yimeng 王祎梦, stick close to the original script by Ke and Taiwan writer Chen Yuli 陈昱俐, but, following usual Mainland procedure with sensitive subjects, have set it in the past and outside China – in 2006 on an unnamed Pacific island that’s populated by Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking Chinese plus a scattering of Malays. (The bulk of the film was shot in Ke’s hometown of Penang, Malaysia.) Apart from Hong Kong d.p. Zhang Ying 张颖 (who shot the original version, as well as Sheep), virtually the entire tech team is new. The cast certainly is, with Ke’s actress wife, German-born, Taiwan-raised Zhang Junning 张钧甯 (Dinner for Six 六人晚餐, 2016), getting the plum role of the mother drawn into the serial killings, and Shanghai-born Wang Chuanjun 王传君 (the leukaemia patient in Dying to Survive 我不是药神, 2018; chief crook in No More Bets 孤注一掷, 2023) playing the chief suspect. Wu Zhenyu 吴镇宇 [Francis Ng], now one of Hong Kong’s most commanding character actors, puts in a relatively brief but memorable turn as an eccentric chief detective, while Beijing-born Wang Shengdi 王圣迪 (A Writer’s Odyssey 刺杀小说家, 2021; Post Truth #保你平安, 2022), now 14, is well cast as the mute daughter at the centre of the whole tangled web. They’re backed up by strong playing down the line, with names like Taiwan veteran Jin Shijie 金士杰 as a duplicitous retiring teacher, and Mainland actresses Li Meng 李梦 as a victim’s mother, veteran Cai Ming 蔡明 as a mouthy landlady, and Xu Jiao 徐娇, now in her late 20s, as the daughter’s teen BFF.
Despite the strong cast, and a good fist from Wang as the chief suspect, Zhang, 41, makes the film her own in her best performance to date. Almost unrecognisable (except in a brief flashback) as the school’s dowdy cleaning lady struggling to put her mute daughter through high school, de-glammed Zhang covers all the contradictions of her role with a conviction that’s utterly convincing – and, in true whodunit style, deliberately misleading. The audience is genuinely led to believe that this mother is capable of anything, in a way that Wang, as the school’s cryptic handyman, never quite manages. It’s just a shame that Zhang and her co-stars are let down in the second half by a screenplay that gradually wears away the viewer’s involvement with a succession of over-played setpieces, unbelievable twists, and unnecessarily complex plotting that’s just too piled-on and thickly seedy. Even the film’s roundabout narrative structure becomes increasingly annoying, with too much only explained after the fact (often in flashbacks) and the fantasy/dream sections not adding anything except extra length, with a running time that’s 15 minutes longer than the original’s.
Nevertheless, as in Sheep, there’s no doubting Ke’s sheer technical prowess, which earns the film an extra point. Along with d.p. Zhang, he conjures up a humid, rainy island that’s thick with atmospheric intrigue, and his setpieces, while not always making logical sense, are skilfully built up. Editing by Zhang Zhiyan 张治岩 and Zhou Yuan 周元 (The Victims 黄雀在后！, 2024) is always silkily smooth; music by female Mainland rock duo Doudou is unremarkable. Production design by Hong Kong’s Lei Chuxiong 雷楚雄 (The Lost Bladesman 关云长, 2011; The Four II 四大名捕II, 2013) is convincingly on the money for the fictional setting.
The film’s Chinese title simply means “Silent Kill”. In the original version (see poster, left), apart from Huang as the prime suspect, the mother was played by Yin Xin 尹馨, the chief cop by Zhang Shi 张世 and the mute daughter by Liao Chenyi廖宸颐.
CREDITS
Presented by Guangzhou Maoyan Pictures (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Move & TV Culture (CN), Shanghai Just Film (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Shanghai Taimu Film Group (CN), China Film (CN), Wanda Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Hengdian Film (CN), Beijing Maoma Culture (CN). Produced by Shanghai Just Film (CN).
Script: Ke Wenli [Sam Quah], Wang Zhizhi, Wang Yimeng. Story: Ke Wenli [Sam Quah]. Photography: Zhang Ying. Editing: Zhang Zhiyan, Zhou Yuan. Music: Doudou [Du Bing’er, Du Fei’er]. Production design: Lei Chuxiong. Art direction: Lin Weichen. Styling: Tang Ning. Sound: Du Duzhi, Du Zegang. Action: Fu Xiaojie. Visual effects: Wang Yongguang, Guo Zhanhua (Time VFX). Executive direction: Liu Bin.
Cast: Wang Chuanjun (Lin Zaifu), Zhang Junning (Li Han), Wu Zhenyu [Francis Ng] (Dai Guodong, chief detective), Wang Shengdi (Chen Yutong), Cai Ming (Xu, landlady), Jin Shijie (Fang Juedong), Huang Minghao (Wu Wang), Xu Jiao (Lin Huijun), Aruna (Xiaowen, detective), Wang Chengsi (Galibao/Curry Bun, detective), Liu Xiaohai (An Huaimin, headmaster), Xing Jiadong (Chen Mingzhang, Li Han’s husband), Li Meng (Zhong Xiaoqing’s mother), Shen Hao (Yang, teacher), Cheng Mo (Zhang, teacher), Deng Jinhuang [Tan Kim Wang] (Hui, shopkeeper), Mu Mengjiao (An Qi), Gu Mingyi (Zhong Xiaoqing), Zhuo Yinamu (Huang Wenling), Wang Xiaoyunzi (Gao Jingshu).
Release: China, 3 Jul 2024.