Save Your Soul
灵魂的救赎
China, 2019, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 87 mins.
Director: Yang Zhen 杨真.
Rating: 5/10.
Light drama about a delusional father and another family’s young son has good leads but a flawed script.
STORY
Zhuzhou city, Hunan province, southern China, early 2018. He Guodian (Wang Xun), a worker at a demolition yard, is arrested for snatching a boy, Song Wenxi (Zhang Junhao), outside Baihe primary school in the belief that the child is his missing son, He Xiaoyu. Ever since his son was killed by the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008, He Guodian has refused to accept his death – even when his wife, Du Moli (Huang Xiaolei), shows him an official certificate – and has also refused to join a bereavement centre since moving to Hunan province. Du Moli manages to persuade the police to let her husband go, but He Guodian still believes Song Wenxi is his son and obsessively follows him around. Though from a comfortably-off family, Song Wenxi is a lonely child, made fun of at school and with yuppie parents who are constantly working. He Guodian manages to eventually re-win his trust in a public park one day and, using scrap from the demolition yard, helps him build a robot as part of a school project. The two meet regularly after school but when Du Moli finds them together at the yard she orders He Guodian to take the boy home immediately. As he goes inside his home, Song Wenxi hears his parents arguing, the mother (Liu Yiying) threatening divorce, and both saying how they didn’t really want a child anyway. Song Wenxi begs He Guodian to take him back and, impulsively, He Guodian takes him on an overnight train back to his own hometown in northern Sichuan province. However, during the journey Song Wenxi changes his mind and asks to be taken home. Next day the child’s parents find Song Wenxi and He Guodian waiting outside their flat; the father (Zhou Xiaobin) attacks He Guodian, though later, at the police station, He Guodian is let go again, partly thanks to the boy’s pleas. (He Guodian remembers family life back in northern Sichuan, and the day of the earthquake, when he was travelling.) He Guodian finishes off the robot and leaves it outside Song Wenxi’s home; in desperation, the boy’s parents hire thugs to warn He Guodian off, and the latter finally seems to see reason. But then Song Wenxi, fed up with his parents, comes looking for He Guodian at the demolition yard.
REVIEW
A yuppie couple’s lonely kid and a father who won’t accept his own son’s death form a relationship of convenience in Save Your Soul 灵魂的救赎, a light drama that skirts perilously close to being a pamphlet for responsible parenting. One of the better films of Shandong-born director Yang Zhen 杨真, a prolific journeyman of the past decade or so who’s largely made family- or community-centred movies (Good Persons in Rizhao 日照好人, 2011; Young Min Ziqian 少年闵子骞, 2013), Soul benefits from strong lead casting of goofy-looking comedian Wang Xun 王迅, 45, and actress Huang Xiaolei 黄小蕾, 39, but is hampered by a script that has a manufactured feel in order to push a message first. The kind of film that is now largely relegated to TV, it made zero impression at the Mainland box office (less than RMB1 million).
As the father who still won’t accept his son’s death back in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Wang (Kill Me Please 这就是命, 2017; The Big Shot “大”人物, 2019) flecks the role with touches of comedy that make the character more sympathetic and bearable over the long stretch, while Huang, largely in supporting roles outside TV, gives another quietly classy performance as his exasperated but still loyal wife. Though Wang goes a long way in making the behaviour of the father credible, it’s still a stretch that he’s so nutty almost a decade later, and after moving to another province – and that the local police there are so indulgent towards him. The brattiness of the kid (by child actor Zhang Junhao 张峻豪, who previously played with Wang in the comedy You’d Better Run 你往哪里跑, 2017) also doesn’t help build audience involvement.
The other problem is that the script – rather freely based on a 2009 novel, 救赎 (literally, “Redemption”), by Fujian-born writer Li Ximin 李西闽 (see cover, left) – is finally more about the bad parenting of the kid than the main character’s delusion. Despite this plot skid, the boy’s parents are thinly and unsympathetically portrayed throughout, as two career-obsessed, bickering yuppies who didn’t even want a child in the first place. Their sudden conversion near the end is jolting, to say the least, as is the equally happy ending for the main character and his wife that’s tacked on like an after-thought.
Yang directs fluidly, without personal quirks, and is supported by solid camerawork from d.p. Liu Weibo 刘伟波, shooting in the story’s actual location of Zhuzhou city, Hunan province, southern China. Music by Yang’s regular composer, Liu Sha 刘沙, is suitably light and perky in happier scenes but too on the nose (plaintive violin solos) in emotional ones. The 2008 Sichuan earthquake also formed the background to Yang’s very decent drama, Good Persons in Rizhao, based on the true story of volunteer helpers who travelled all the way from Shandong province.
CREDITS
Presented by Shenzhen Golden Rose Film & TV Media (CN), Huizhou Golden Rose Film & TV Media (CN), Shenzhen Qianhai Bulldozer Film (CN), Huizhou Rosebush Film & TV Media (CN). Produced by Shenzhen Golden Rose Movie Distribution (CN).
Script: Du Er, Yan Xixiu, Xia Yunhua, Lv Limin. Novel: Li Ximin. Photography: Liu Weibo. Editing: Wang Shu. Music: Liu Sha. Art direction: Wang Haiyuan. Styling: Tian Li’na. Sound: Wang Yinhui. Executive direction: Zheng Yonggang.
Cast: Wang Xun (He Guodian), Huang Xiaolei (Du Moli), Zhang Junhao (He Xiaoyu; Song Wenxi), Zhou Xiaobin (Song Qing), Liu Yiying (Qin Yue), Kuang Muye (Liu, police officer), Zhu Jun (Long), Zhang Yuankun (Zhou Zhu), Xu Yawen (Xia Dongmei, Du Moli’s pregnant co-worker), Ma Weixuan (Zhang Rong), Han Wei (Ma, chief thug).
Release: China, 11 Jan 2019.