Fantasia
幻想曲
China, 2014, colour, 1.85:1, 86 mins.
Director: Wang Chao 王超.
Rating: 5/10.
Average, uninventive indie focused on an average family and its problems.
STORY
Chongqing, central China, the present day. Zhao (Zhang Xu), a lathe worker at Guangming Gear Factory, is diagnosed with advanced leukaemia, and his family has to find RMB21,000 for an immediate blood transfusion. His teenage son, Zhao Lin (Hu Ruijie), has been skipping high school. His wife Tang Min (Su Su), a former singer in a song-and-dance troupe, does small jobs like selling newspapers at a stand and doing a milk round. As Zhao repeatedly collapses and has to have hospital treatment, the family’s finances are stretched, especially when the gear factory says it has to cut back on helping out with his medical expenses. The mother resorts to selling her blood; the daughter (Jian Renzi) works as a hostess in a KTV club; and the son keeps trying to get jobs to help out. But Zhao’s illness is incurable.
REVIEW
Films with titles like Fantasia often have no clear idea what they’re about, and so it is with the sixth feature of Mainland director Wang Chao 王超, whose career has swung in and out of focus over the past decade or so. After starting in a solidly indie manner with The Orphan of Anyang 安阳婴儿 (2001) and Night and Day 日日夜夜 (2004), he found a perfect balance between style and content, art and accessibility, with the father-daughter drama 江城夏日 Luxury Car (2006) before entering the semi-mainstream with yuppie amnesia drama Memory of Love 重来 (2009, a French co-production) and then retreating to low-budget indie fare with the little-seen “soul marriage” drama Celestial Kingdom 天国 (2011). Three years after that, Wang has returned with the somewhat more audience-friendly Fantasia 幻想曲; but though it’s never exactly boring, it’s never exactly interesting either.
On the surface the movie is an “average family” drama in which the strain of the father’s terminal leukaemia (and the expense of his medical treatment) opens up divisions between the members. But there’s a singular lack of any real drama throughout, as the film wanders from the father’s regular trips into hospital for transfusions, to the son and his extra-curricular activities when he should be at school, to the daughter and her job as a bargirl, and to the plucky mother trying to raise money by doing a milkround or by selling her blood. Almost every element of Fantasia has been seen in other Mainland indie films at some time, including Wang’s own; the only fresh element here is his avoidance of dialogue scenes that would add nothing new to what the audience has already seen. Thus, when the mother catches the daughter coming home early one morning in a slutty party dress, Wang leaves the look between them to say it all.
Performances are fairly blank, in usual indie style, but not excessively so, except in the case of the teenage son, who remains an enigma throughout. Photography by Zhao Yuqing 赵昱清 (Cool Young 正•青春, 2010) of the Chongqing locations, and the ever-present Yangtse River, is quietly attractive, and at only 86 minutes the movie doesn’t overstay its welcome too much. But Wang has shown he can do much better than foggy jottings like this. He’s already [during Sep-Dec 2013] shot a more mainstream feature, the Paris/Tibet-set drama Seek McCartney 寻找罗麦, with a cast including Han Geng 韩庚, Jérémie Elkaïm and Jian Renzi 菅纫姿 (the sister in Fantasia). [The film was finally released in China in Apr 2018, with the English title changed to Looking for Rohmer, and crashed at the box office.]
CREDITS
Presented by Legend Films (CN), Wuhan Legend Film & TV Art (CN), Beijing Chun Qiu Culture (CN). Produced by Wutong Films (CN).
Script: Wang Chao. Photography: Zhao Yuqing. Editing: Wang Chao, Huang Shang. Music: none. Art direction: Tian Yulong. Costumes: Lan Yue. Sound: Wang Ran.
Cast: Su Su (Tang Min, mother), Hu Ruijie (Zhao Lin, son), Zhang Xu (Zhao, father), Jian Renzi (Zhao Xingqin, sister), Li Ou (Zhou Liqun, new teacher), Zhang Lu (bearded man), Wang Xiaomo (young girl).
Premiere: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), 21 May 2014.
Release: China, 20 Jun 2014.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 28 May 2014.)