The Enigma of Arrival
抵达之谜
China, 2018, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 113 mins.
Director: Song Wen 宋文.
Rating: 6/10.
Okay drama of student friendships that go awry doesn’t deliver any promised depth.
STORY
Qianchuan city, Wuhu municipality, Anhui province, by the Yangtze river, sometime in the mid-1990s. Four friends at Wuhu Technical School of Marine Engineering spend most of their time fooling around instead of studying: the group’s de facto leader Zhao Xiaolong (Li Xian), whose father is a fishmonger; the quiet Fang Yuan (Dong Borui); the rangy Dai Siwen, aka Da Si (Lin Xiaofan); and the innocent, more studious San Pi (Liu Weibo). When they one day meet the 20-year-old Li Dongdong (Gu Xuan), 20, all of them are attracted by her beauty, though Dai Siwen makes a beeline for her best friend, the mouthy Liu Xiaomei (Zhang Qiyan). Li Dongdong shows a particular interest in Zhao Xiaolong, though he acts very laid back. When she invites him to attend an athletics competition in which her college is taking part, she is annoyed when he brings along his pals. Her teacher, Zhu (Lu Jiahao), is also annoyed with her, for making her own way by ferry rather than coming with her fellow students on the official coach. At an argument afterwards, Zhu is knocked down by Zhao Xiaolong, who is subsequently expelled from technical school. He says he doesn’t care, as all the studying is useless. The group of four boys and two girls continue to spend time together, though Li Dongdong and Zhao Xiaolong avoid talking to each other. The group is joined by Wu Yi (Li Zonglei), an old schoolfriend of Zhao Xiaolong; his elder brother, Wu Zhong (Guo Minghan), owns a fish restaurant they often visit. When they become involved in petty crime – stealing some oil – they’re beaten up by gangsters. Li Dongdong tries to help out by offering to refund the gangsters with some of her own money. But then one night, when the group sets fire to a boat as the dispute with the gangsters escalates, Li Dongdong mysteriously disappears, leaving her backpack behind. Wu Yi is suspected of being involved with her disappearance, but the case is never solved and her body never found. San Pi is sent by his parents to Shanghai to study and the rest of the group slowly fragments as Zhao Xiaolong and Fang Yuan argue and Dai Siwen is imprisoned for smashing up a discotheque. However, Zhao Xiaolong remains obsessed by finding Li Dongdong, and takes a radical step to find out what happened that night. Years later, however, when they get together for a reunion lunch, the past still haunts the whole group.
REVIEW
Some young loafers in a city on the Yangtze during the mid-1990s find their lives forever haunted by the mysterious disappearance of one of their number in The Enigma of Arrival 抵达之谜, an okay but surprisingly conventional directing debut by Anhui-born Song Wen 宋文, who’s best known as the founder of the Mainland’s premier indie event, First Film Festival, based in Xining, Qinghai province, since 2006. Song shot the film in his native Anhui province, west of Shanghai, in 2015, then aged 38. It premiered in late 2018 at South Korea’s Busan festival and was originally due to be released in China on Valentine’s Day 2020. After being cancelled because of the coronavirus epidemic, it was finally released at the end of July as Mainland cinemas started to re-open, and has taken a modest RMB25 million.
Song’s background as head of a pioneering film festival should not influence one’s reaction to his movie, but, along with his portentous use of the title of V.S. Naipaul’s 1987 novel (with which it has no connection), it can’t help but raise expectations a little. At the end of the day, however, Enigma is just another variation on the popular theme of past vs present, college days vs real life, a mildly-spun ode to lost youth and friendships with no extra subtext. Strongly cast with up-and-coming talent, and with a strong feel for its mid-1990s Yangtze setting, it holds the attention while never really delivering anything really gripping or special. It could also profitably lose 15 minutes.
Set in the days of cassette tapes, Walkmans, brick-like mobile phones and adoration of Hong Kong crime movies, the film takes place in a fictional but typical Yangtze town where four student loafers (at a technical college, not university) hook up with two girls and the group is later joined by a fifth guy who leads them into petty crime. Parallel with their marginal “descent” into lawlessness runs the story between one of the girls, Li Dongdong, and the group’s low-key leader, Zhao Xiaolong – an on-off relationship that takes on obsessive proportions when she mysteriously vanishes one night and he spends a lifetime looking for and thinking about her. Above and beyond all this – told in a slightly fractured, non-linear style, with random use of b&w occasionally – runs the greater story of the group’s gradual fragmentation as friendships fray or are disrupted by real life. At no point are the group’s parents or other friends ever shown, underlining the social bubble in which they exist.
The story proper ends at the 85-minute mark; a lengthy coda, set some 10-15 years later, is largely about the still raw wounds between everyone, and adds little to what has already been explained about the central mystery. Again, the film promises more than it actually delivers, though the acting and direction are never less than solid.
Then in his mid-20s, Li Xian 李现, who had debuted strongly as the student son in the fine family drama Feng Shui 万箭穿心 (2012), dials back the good-looking charm as Zhao Xiaolong in a low-key performance that’s okay but lacks the passion to convince about his buried emotions. He’s too often thrown into the shadow by Lin Xiaofan 林晓凡 as the wide-boy member of the group and especially by Li Zonglei 李宗雷 (also one of the five scriptwriters) as the newcomer who’s the motive force behind the whole plot. As the striking beauty at the centre of the emotional drama, foxy dancer-turned-actress Gu Xuan 顾璇, then 27, who started out as the jealous rich girl in Disney High School Musical China 歌舞青春 (2010), cuts a striking physical presence but isn’t given much dialogue to express her character in what is a very male-centred movie. Stronger in that respect is Zhang Qiyan 张绮烟, as her no-nonsense best friend.
The widescreen photography, by Li You 李尤, is handheld with no special visual style, apart from realistically drawing the shabby, barge-filled environs of riverside Yangtze life in the mid-1990s. Veteran director/teacher Xie Fei 谢飞 is credited as creative producer 监制.
CREDITS
Presented by Bingchi (Shanghai) Pictures (CN), Hehe (Shanghai) Pictures (CN), Black Ant (Shanghai) Film.
Script: Tao Richeng, Song Wen, Li Zonglei, Duan Lian, Yang Dan. Photography: Li You. Editing: Yang Hongyu, Yang Ou. Music: Zhu Mingkang, Hu Chao. Art direction: Xie Shoujie. Costumes: Wang Na. Styling: Liu Yimu. Sound: Guo Xiaoshi. Action: Zhou Jie. Visual effects: Zhong Xiaobo. Executive direction: Zhang Yi.
Cast: Li Xian (Zhao Xiaolong), Dong Borui (Fang Yuan), Gu Xuan (Li Dongdong), Lin Xiaofan (Dai Siwen/Da Si), Liu Weibo (San Pi), Li Zonglei (Wu Yi), Zhang Qiyan (Liu Xiaomei), Guo Minghan (Wu Zhong), Lu Jiahao (Zhu, teacher).
Premiere: Busan Film Festival (A Window on Asian Cinema), 5 Oct 2018.
Release: China, 31 Jul 2020.