Wu Hai
乌海
China, 2020, colour, 2.35:1, 102 mins.
Director: Zhou Ziyang 周子阳.
Rating: 5/10.
Drama of a crumbling marriage has two strong leads but is weakened by over-mannered direction.
STORY
Wuhai city, Inner Mongolia province, northern China, the present day. In debt for almost RMB2 million to loanshark Wang, Yang Hua (Huang Xuan) drives to visit old school friend Luo Yu (Wang Shaohua), who owes him money. The two previously partnered on a Dinosaur Park project that never opened. Luo Yu’s current project is a luxury camping resort in the desert that’s due to open soon. He tells Yang Hua he has no spare cash at the moment but will let him collect (and keep) some small debts he’s owed. Yang Hua’s wife, Miao Wei (Yang Zishan), has a struggling yoga business and also owns the flat they live in; it was bought by her father (Tumen), who angrily tells Yang Hua to sort out his financial problems. Miao Wei discovers she’s pregnant but doesn’t tell Yang Hua. Luo Yu’s assistant, Xiaocheng (Wang Yu), takes Yang Hua to meet the first of Luo Yu’s debtors, a young woman called Wei Wei (Huang Wen). She doesn’t have any money but Xiaocheng tells her to offer Yang Hua sex instead. Yang Hua refuses her advances in the car, making Xiaocheng angry and Wei Wei nervous that he’ll tell her parents. Meanwhile, Yang Hua finds evidence that Miao Wei has been in contact with an old university boyfriend who’s recently got in touch with her again. Back home, after Xiaocheng sends Wei Wei’s photo to Miao Wei’s phone, a furious row breaks out between Yang Hua and Miao Wei: he denies having sex with Wei Wei and she won’t say who the former boyfriend is. Yang Hua stalks out and goes up a nearby mountain that has romantic connotations for him and Miao Wei. That night he sleeps in his car. Next day Miao Wei goes to the hospital for a scan and her mother (Wulan) nags her to tell her husband the news. Yang Hua, meanwhile, visits his poor parents (Tao Jisheng, Niu Huaduo) on the edge of town, where his elder sister (Wang Mingshuo) even asks to borrow a few thousand yuan. Pressure mounts from the loansharks and then Wei Wei, who hysterically accuses Yang Hua of posting her pictures on the internet, forces the issue, driving Yang Hua to confront Luo Yu at his glamping site in the desert.
REVIEW
The story of a marriage fragmenting under financial and economic pressures, Wu Hai 乌海 has a lot going for it but, like the first feature of writer-director Zhou Ziyang 周子阳, Old Beast 老兽 (2017), it’s continually weakened by drawn-out, mannered direction and a perverse desire to often keep the audience in the dark. Also in common with the earlier film, it could profitably lose some 20 minutes, as its points are already well made well before the ambiguous ending. Largely sustained by the lead performances of Huang Xuan 黄轩 and Yang Zishan 杨子姗, as the indebted husband and pressurised wife, it took some RMB14 million on Mainland release this autumn – a modest but solid enough amount for such specialised fare, and seven times Beast’s microscopic hawl.
Like Beast, the film is set in Zhou’s native province of Inner Mongolia, in this case Wuhai, a mining city 800 kilometres west of Beijing – and the difficult economic background is again a constant litany behind the principals’ woes. Desperate to prove himself as a businessman to his better-off in-laws, the husband (Huang) already has one failed scheme (a “dinosaur park”) behind him and is now pursued by loansharks for a hefty debt. His wife (Yang) has a struggling new-age yoga business and has just discovered she’s pregnant; just to add to her problems, she’s being hassled by an old boyfriend from college days who now declares he’s still in love with her. The husband goes to meet his former business partner (and school friend) to get some money he’s owed, but the latter is about launch a luxury camp site in the desert and claims he has no ready cash – which is where all the trouble starts.
As the husband runs from pillar to post, with the loansharks in hot pursuit, his marriage gradually crumbles, despite his best efforts and memories of a romantic past. Though a lot of the film’s dialogue merely marks time without advancing the drama, two scenes do stand out: a heated row between the couple, around the 30-minute mark, which rings very true as old tensions come to the surface and nothing is (or can be) resolved, and a later chat during the final mountain sequence.
Both Huang (Youth 芳华, 2017; Only Cloud Knows 只有芸知道, 2019) and Yang (Miss Granny 重返20岁, 2015; One Night Only 天亮之前, 2016; Till the End of the World 南极之恋, 2018) have excellent chemistry in both scenes – and especially the first, which is shot in one long take in their flat. Physically, the very Han-, southern Chinese-looking Yang isn’t believable as the daughter of native Inner Mongolians (played by veteran Tumen 涂们, the lead in Beast, and Wulan 乌兰) but, like Huang, she compensates with strong interior acting. As the husband’s smooth-talking friend, Wang Shaohua 王韶华 is entirely believable, and actress Huang Wen 黄雯 makes a brief impression as a highly-strung debtor. Both are big-screen debuts.
Shot in late 2019, largely in Wuhai itself, the film has a much more photogenic look than Beast, also by Belgian d.p. Matthias Delvaux. Reportedly the first film by a young Chinese director to use the Arri Alexa 65 camera, Wu Hai makes the most of the location’s scenic opportunities in widescreen, from sunsets to desert panoramas, and has a sharp, very hi-def look. Other technical credits are modest but fine. The film’s title has the city’s name as two words, not one, though that may be deliberate to highlight the downbeat quality of its literal meaning (“Black Sea”).
CREDITS
Presented by Juben (Shanghai) Pictures (CN), Old Beast (Shanghai) Films (CN), Beijing Booy Legend Media (CN). Produced by Beijing Old Beast Films (CN), Beijing Juben Pictures (CN).
Script: Zhou Ziyang. Photography: Matthias Delvaux (main unit), Wang Weihua (Beijing unit). Editing: Liu Xinzhu. Music: Jan Wiegel. Art direction: Peng Shaoying. Sound: Zhang Jinyan, Long Xiaozhu, Ma Jie. Action: Wei Bin. Visual effects: Liu Tiansheng (Global Mofy). Executive direction: Liu Xiaolei, Jiang Shaodong.
Cast: Huang Xuan (Yang Hua), Yang Zishan (Miao Wei), Tumen (Miao Wei’s father), Wang Shaohua (Luo Yu), Wang Yu (Xiaocheng), Huang Wen (Wei Wei), Wang Chaobei (Zhang Jian), Wulan (Miao Wei’s mother), Li Dongli (Gao Wei), Niu Huaduo (Yang Hua’s mother), Tao Jisheng (Yang Hua’s father), Wang Mingshuo (Yang Hua’s elder sister), Zhou Yonghao (Dandan), Hu Nan (Li Qiang).
Premiere: San Sebastian Film Festival (Competition), 24 Sep 2020.
Release: China, 29 Oct 2021.