Like Winds Like Weeds

苍山

China, 2023, colour, 2:1, 108 mins.

Director: Zhang Fan 张帆.

Rating: 4/10.

Potentially interesting portrait of a middle-aged woman torn between family and independence, and two cities, is let down by a dramatically blah script.

STORY

Shanghai, 2013. Since separating from her husband (Li Yong) years ago, Zhang Xiaomei (Guo Keyu), the youngest of three sisters, has been making her living as a cleaner and raising her son Zhang Xing (Chen Jiayang) down in Shanghai. Now a problem teenager who’s somewhat estranged from his mother, Zhang Xing, a cellist, is about to sit the exam to enter a musical conservatory. Unwilling to leave Zhang Xing alone in Shanghai during such a crucial time, Zhang Xiaomei initially resists family pressure to attend the celebration of the 100th day of the birth of her niece, the child of her second sister Zhenzhen (Cao Yumei). But finally she agrees, and travels north to her hometown of Cangshan, Shandong province. At the celebration meal, her husband turns up and sits next to her, but she doesn’t say anything. Zhang Xiaomei stays with her mother (Wang Shiyun), who has Alzheimer’s. She and her two sisters select a care home for their mother and, when her eldest sister (Liu Guihong) suggests drawing up a legal document over future ownership of their mother’s property, Zhang Xiaomei says she wants no share of it. She finally agrees to meet her husband, who wants a reconciliation and for her to move back to Cangshan, but she totally rejects both ideas. Instead, she takes her mother back with her to Shanghai, managing to look after her while still working as a cleaner. She becomes friendly with a new client, abstract painter Song (Qu Fengguo), who works from home. One day, Zhang Xiaomei sees Zhang Xing talking with a teenage girl, Xuanxuan (Che Shuyu), in the street; worried that she poses a distraction from his exam studies, she talks to the girl’s mother (Zhang Li), who runs a food stall and also happens to be from Cangshan. But as her mother becomes more and more demanding Zhang Xiaomei is forced to give up cleaning for Song; also, another client, a webcam model (Tian Yuan), moves away. Zhang Xing performs at a Chinese New Year concert and later the whole family of three has a New Year’s Eve dinner at home – where they receive a surprise visit. Soon afterwards, however, Zhang Xiaomei has to decide what to do with her mother.

REVIEW

While living a life of her own in Shanghai, a middle-aged woman is called back to her hometown in the north and rediscovers the pull of family ties in Like Winds Like Weeds 苍山, a potentially interesting first feature by former art director Zhang Fan 张帆, 40, that has several nice little touches but is let down by a lack of dramatic momentum and too much directorial posturing. The performances, especially by a glammed-down Guo Keyu 郭柯宇, 47, in the lead, just about maintain interest but the film still has too much dead time for its own good. Premiered at a Mainland festival two years ago, it finally got a limited release in spring 2025, taking a microscopic RMB674,000.

A graduate in stage design from Shanghai Theatre Academy, Zhang has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. (He shouldn’t be confused with the Inner Mongolia-born writer-director or Changchun-born actress-director or at least four actors, all of whom have exactly the same name 张帆.) Though the screenplay, by Zhang and Wang Yingjie 王颖杰 (in her writing debut) has plenty of potential – a middle-aged woman forging a life in Shanghai, alongside her alienated son and scatty mother and away from her northern roots – they fail to develop it into anything that’s dramatically engaging, with long stretches of nothing except day-to-day events. After a start that sows some interesting seeds, the film soon settles down into the story of a woman dealing with the practical problems of her mother’s dementia, with other strands like her son’s teenage bolshiness and the wishes of her (separated) husband pushed to the sidelines.

Despite its dramatic flaws, the film always looks well-composed thanks to d.p. Li Yong 李勇 (A First Farewell 第一次的离别, 2018) – a director in his own right who also plays the protagonist’s husband in a couple of scenes – and is smoothly edited by the experienced Yang Hongyu 杨红雨. Small touches like the camera imperceptibly moving during long shots show some visual care and Zhang and Wang do occasionally come up with fresh ideas, such as one relationship not developing in the expected way. Largely a TV actress, Guo, so good as the victim’s mother in Another Day of Hope 又是充满希望的一天 (2023), gives more than the script actually provides.

Another major flaw is that the film doesn’t paint any real difference – visually or atmospherically – between “foreign” Shanghai and “hometown” Cangshan, though at the end of the day maybe that’s the point. The real-life event of Cangshan reverting to its original (pre-PRC) name of Lanling in 2014 appears to be a fundamental point for the writers but is almost thrown away dramatically.

The film’s Chinese title is simply the name of the protagonist’s hometown, Cangshan (literally, “Turquoise Hills”), in Shandong province. What the English title refers to is anybody’s guess. An early alternative was Nowhere Float.

CREDITS

Presented by Lynn & Fan Pictures (Shanghai) (CN), Zhong Film Production (Beijing) (CN). Produced by Lynn & Fan Pictures (Shanghai) (CN).

Script: Zhang Fan, Wang Yingjie. Photography: Li Yong. Editing: Yang Hongyu. Music supervision: Zhu Xuzhi [Serial9]. Art direction: Xiang Jialing, Zhang Xiaoyu. Costumes: Zhang Jiantao. Styling: Deng Qiying. Sound: Zhang Jinyan, Long Xiaoju.

Cast: Guo Keyu (Zhang Xiaomei, third sister), Wang Shiyun (sisters’ mother), Chen Jiayang (Zhang Xing, Zhang Xiaomei’s son), Liu Guihong (first sister), Cao Yumei (Zhenzhen, second sister), Qu Fengguo (Song, painter), Li Yong (Xiaomei’s husband), Che Shuyu (Xuanxuan), Zhang Li (Xuanxuan’s mother), Zhang Zhongmei (Chen, cleaning woman), Li Xiaoyan (Li, old female neighbour), Tian Yuan (webcam model), Li Hongjin (Wang, graveyard attendant).

Premiere: First Film Festival (Competition), Xining, China, 25 Jul 2023.

Release: China, 4 Mar 2025.