Five Hundred Miles
交换人生
China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 108 mins.
Director: Su Lun 苏伦.
Rating: 6/10.
Body-swap comedy is pleasant enough but lacks real heft and originality, despite solid leads.
STORY
Shanghai, Sep 2021. Lu Xiaogu (Zhang Youhao), 18, lives with his parents (Sha Yi, Liu Mintao), younger sister Lu Xiaodao (Yang Enyou) and dotty grandmother (Wu Yanshu) in a typical alleyway where the family owns a noodle shop. His parents dream no farther than buying the fruit shop of A Li (Jiang Yun) next door; Lu Xiaogu dreams of something bigger in life but as yet hasn’t formulated any plans. He’s developed a crush on Jin Hao (Zhang Xiaofei), a woman in her early 30s who visits the area for work as she tries to earn enough to pay off the debts of her spendthrift mother, Li Xiumei (Ding Jiali), with whom she still lives. Jin Hao is being romanced by Zhong Da (Lei Jiayin), a corrupt lawyer who’s taking bribes from Lv (Yu Ailei), the head of a shoe-making company, whom he’s meant to be prosecuting in court. On day, while pursuing Zhong Da, Lu Xiaogu crashes his bike into Zhong Da’s car, falls off, and is swallowed up by the ground – ending up in a magical, parallel universe of mechanical objects. One of those, a “space pinball” toy that grants wishes, he brings with him when he’s bounced back to the real world. His first attempt to use the toy ends with him temporarily changed into a goose. His second attempt is more successful, but when he’s granted his wish to become Jin Hao’s boyfriend, he finds himself changed physically into Zhong Da. When he tries to explain to his parents that he’s still Lu Xiaogu, they don’t believe him and kick him out of the house. He goes to stay with his best friend Xiaopang (Cao Tongrui), whom he finally convinces of the truth. Meanwhile, the real Zhong Da, who’s recovering from the car crash in hospital, has morphed into Lu Xiaogu. Lu Xiaogu and Xiaopang discover the toy will only grant a third and final wish in six days’ time, so in the meantime, as he looks like Zhong Da, Lu Xiaogu decides to spend some time dating Jin Hao. The two end up having a wild night, especially when Jin Hao gets very drunk, though it ends badly the following morning. Meanwhile, Zhong Da goes to live in Lu Xiaogu’s home, where he’s accepted (kind of) by Lu Xiaogu’s parents as he looks like their son. However, Zhong Da has less success in getting an appointment with Lv, whom he urgently needs to see about their financial arrangement.
REVIEW
A teenage boy and a corrupt lawyer inhabit each other’s physical beings in body-swap comedy Five Hundred Miles 交换人生, the third feature by Inner Mongolia-born writer-director Su Lun 苏伦, who previously made the time-swap rom-com How Long Will I Love U 超时空同居 (2018). Miles lacks the inventiveness of Love U, in which two people from different eras found themselves cohabiting in the same flat thanks to a time-warp. It is helped a lot by the lead performances of Lei Jiayin 雷佳音 (Love U; Memento 记忆碎片, 2016) as the corrupt, amorous lawyer and Zhang Xiaofei 张小斐 (the young mother-to-be in time-travel megahit Hi, Mom 你好，李焕英, 2021) as the canny object of his desire. But Miles is far from being Chinese cinema’s first body-swap comedy – for a start, Ma Hua FunAge troupe already made Goodbye Mr. Loser 夏洛特烦恼 (2015) and Never Say Die 羞羞的铁拳 (2017) – and, solid-to-good as the cast is, there are moments when the presence of bona fide stars like, say, Shen Teng 沈腾 and Ma Li 马丽 would have given the film the dramatic heft it so often lacks. Of this year’s five Chinese New Year contenders, it ended up in fourth place with RMB393 million, a solid amount at any other time of year but way below the big CNY winners, Full River Red 满江红 and The Wandering Earth II 流浪地球2, both of which have broken the RMB4 billion barrier.
Where Love U was a kind of heterosexual take on Su’s first feature, the chickflick rom-com Lips and Soul 唇唇欲动 (2013) in which a tomboy and a girly girl were forced to share a flat, Miles goes in a slightly different direction while still inhabiting the fantasy world of her second feature. The problem is that this time the plot has a very manufactured feel. Told from the point-of-view of an ambitious, 18-year-old Shanghaier, Lu Xiaogu (Zhang Youhao 张宥浩, Farewell My Lad 再见，少年, 2020), who has bigger dreams in life than his backstreet noodleshop-owning parents but still no idea how to achieve them, the film starts in formularly style with him and a best friend larking around and Lu Xiaogu obsessed by an older, 30-something woman, Jin Hao (Zhang), who’s working in the area. The audience is told that Jin Hao is not quite the dream girl her slo-mo introduction supposes: she’s still living at home and working to pay off her spendthrift mother’s debts, while also kind of dating a sleazy lawyer, Zhong Da (Lei). Blissfully ignorant of her family background, Lu Xiaogu sets out to discredit Zhong Da, and the two end up in a traffic collision – during which Lu Xiaogu is thrown off his bike and swallowed up by the pavement. He ends up briefly in a parallel, mechanical world where he finds a pinball toy that can grant three wishes, and when he’s inexplicably bounced back to the real world he takes the toy with him, and tries to use it to become Jin Hao’s boyfriend.
Unlike Su’s genuinely inventive Love U, with its time-warp background, the fantastical element in Miles feels more like a clumsy plot device to get the body-swap idea going. Once Lu Xiaogu and Zhong Da exchange bodies, some of the wacky humour is genuinely amusing, though as a writer Su doesn’t seem able to take it to the next level of absurdity – and there’s no rational reason given (apart from stringing out the plot) why the pinball toy can only grant its final wish in six days’ time. The humour also depends a lot on the chemistry between the three leads, which is variable. Though he was quite lively in virtual-reality action drama Dream Breaker 破梦游戏 (2018), baby-faced Zhang Youhao, actually 28, doesn’t quite bring off his teenage role, either in charm or in energy; much better are the always reliable, theatre-trained Lei and, especially in her scenes of physical comedy (such as her drunken night out), dancer-turned-actress Zhang Xiaofei, 37, who’s finally starting to get the roles she deserves. Though big star names would have punched up the whole thing, and the supporting cast is always solid (Sha Yi 沙溢 as the boy’s father, Wu Yanshu 吴彦姝 as the dotty grandmother, Yu Ailei 余皑磊 as the villain, Ding Jiali 丁嘉丽 as Jin Hao’s crazy mother), the script, as in Su’s previous two features, is also to blame. The plot is just not that compellingly developed, and also lacks a strong enough climax/resolution; instead, it resorts again to fantasy, as well as piling on family sentiment.
Technical credits are fine, with an attentive, pleasant score by Huang Chao 黄超 (Gone with the Light 被光抓走的人, 2019; Nice View 奇迹 笨小孩, 2022), silky editing by the experienced Zhu Lin 朱琳 and her associates, and overall smooth mounting by Su and her d.p. Zhou Wencao 周文操 (period student drama Only the Wind Knows 那一场呼啸而过的青春, 2017; time-bender romance Love You Forever 我在时间尽头等你, 2020), who together with art director Shu Xingjia 舒兴家 and stylist Fu Lei 付雷 evoke a slightly fairytale, backstreets Shanghai. The curious English title is never explained, though it may refer to the 1960s US song about being far from home. The Chinese title simply means “Swapping Lives”.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Ruyi Film & TV Production (CN), Sweet Orange Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Beijing Alibaba Pictures Culture (CN), Beijing Enlight Pictures (CN).
Script: Su Lun. Photography: Zhou Wencao. Editing: Zhu Lin, Xu Chen, Chen Zhongming. Music: Huang Chao. Art direction: Shu Xingjia. Styling: Fu Lei. Sound: Wang Gang, Liu Xiaosha. Action: Wang Zhenming. Visual effects: Liu Yujia, Sun Yu, Sun Haidong. Executive direction: Xi Jialin, Huang Hao.
Cast: Lei Jiayin (Zhong Da), Zhang Xiaofei (Jin Hao), Zhang Youhao (Lu Xiaogu), Sha Yi (Lu Xiaogu’s father), Liu Mintao (Lu Xiaogu’s mother), Yu Ailei (Lv), Ding Jiali (Li Xiumei, Jin Hao’s mother), Wu Yanshu (Lu Xiaogu’s grandmother), Yang Enyou (Lu Xiaodao, Lu Xiaogu’s younger sister), Cao Tongrui (Xiaopang), Yue Yunpeng (taxi driver), Yang Di (restaurant waiter), Fu Shou’er (defence lawyer), Xu Zhisheng (balloon salesman), Wang Shasha (hospital nurse), Song Jiateng, Lai Xiaosheng (Lv’s sidekicks), Pei Kuishan (Ma), Jiang Yun (A Li, fruitshop owner), Cao Yang (Li Guizhi).
Release: China, 22 Jan 2023.