Feng Shui
万箭穿心
China, 2012, colour, 2.35:1, 117 mins.
Director: Wang Jing 王竞.
Rating: 8/10.
Finely crafted family drama is topped by a terrific performace from actress Yan Bingyan.
STORY
Wuhan, central China, the mid-1990s, summer. The ambitious Li Baoli (Yan Bingyan), her husband Ma Xuewu (Jiao Gang) and their eight-year-old son Wenzhao, aka Xiaobao (Wang Tiange), move from their cramped old house into a spacious, more modern, high-rise one provided by the car-parts factory at which Ma Xuewu works as a team leader. The hyperactive Li Baoli is on edge during the move and relentlesly keeps attacking everyone verbally. For her, the move is a major step upwards in life; but soon everything starts to go wrong. Ma Xuewu, fed up with her perpetual bitching, tells her he wants a divorce and starts spending as little time at home as possible. To gain sympathy, Li Baoli tries to use Xiaobao in her domestic war. Meanwhile, Ma Xuewu has taken a liking to a sympathetic co-worker, the married Zhou Fen (Wang Moxi), and when Li Baoli sees him taking her to a hotel one day she makes an anonymous call to the police to raid their room. As a result, Ma Xuewu is demoted at work. The pair continue to live together, but Xiaobao takes his father’s side in Li Baoli’s constant power-playing. Things get worse when Ma Xuewu’s mother (He Minglan), left homeless in her village, comes to live with them, and Ma Xuewu is laid off at work. He commits suicide, and Li Baoli, left to care for her mother-in-law and son, leaves her job in a backstreet socks shop and becomes a female yoke-bearer 女扁担 to earn more cash. Ten years later, she is still doing the same job and Xiaobao (Li Xian), now a top student at high school, is about to take his final exams to enter university. But he has still not forgiven his mother for his father’s death.
REVIEW
Two of China’s most under-rated talents – director Wang Jing 王竞 and actress Yan Bingyan 颜丙燕 – combine to create some magical moments in family drama Feng Shui 万箭穿心, an adaptation of a 2007 novella by veteran Wuhan authoress Fang Fang 方方 about a loving but ambitious young mother whose abrasive personality destroys what is dearest to her. Hardly known outside China, Wang, now in his mid-40s, has quietly built a small but impressive body of films, often with producer-writer Xie Xiaodong 谢晓东, that are notable for their performances and strong scripts, and the way in which they deal with social issues in a cinematic way (migrant workers in The End of Year 一年到头, 2008; internet abuse in Invisible Killer 无形杀, 2009; pharma power in Vegetate 我是植物人, 2010). Yan, 39, is an actress who spends far too much time in TV dramas rather than on the big screen, where her relatively few leading roles have always been memorable (Teeth of Love 爱情的牙齿, 2007; Full Circle 飞越老人院, 2012). Much like South Korean actress Jeon Do-yeon 전도연 | 全度妍, Yan has a chameleon quality – especially well used in Teeth – that allows her to mutate into a role rather than impose her own image on it, and this, under Wang’s supportive direction, is the main draw of Feng Shui.
The lead character of feisty young mother Li Baoli is a difficult balancing act: how to make a determined but self-destructive and manipulative character sympathetic across a story than spans 10 years and two hours’ screen time. Adopting a broad Wuhan accent, Beijing-born Yan gives a performance that’s certainly actressy but in a good way, with enough real and truthful moments to keep the viewer, if not on Li Baoli’s side, then at least fascinated by her emotional journey. Li Baoli’s physical collapse, like a winded boxer, when she discovers her husband’s infidelity, or her shock when her grown son turns on her, are among many notable scenes, as are the small looks and gestures that decorate the character throughout the film.
Feng Shui could have been just another story of the battle by an uneducated but determined Chinese woman to build a path in life, or another story about the country’s economic and social changes from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s (the film is split into two equal parts). Instead, it’s actually much less cut-and dried – a film in which there are no heroes or villains, where most of the characters are flawed, most of them adapt with typical Chinese practicality, and the leading character still doesn’t quite get the point even at the end. The script by Wu Nan 吴楠 is especially good at keeping all these elements in play, with the moral ground always shifting and her writing tight and unobvious.
Wang assembles a fine supporting cast, each with his or her own character trajectories, to make the mixture work. Theatre actor Jiao Gang 焦刚 (who had supporting roles in The Postmodern Life of My Aunt 姨妈的后现代生活, 2006, and And the Spring Comes 立春, 2008) is nicely low-key as the basically decent husband, TV drama actor Chen Gang 陈刚 is charismatic as a gangster who comes into Li Baoli’s life in the second half, and veteran Wuhan theatre and TV actress He Minglan 何明兰 skilfully underplays the mother-in-law who stands up to Li Baoli and helps reshape her life. Both Wang Tiange 王天戈 and the older Li Xian 李现 are strong as Li Baoli’s son, while Zhao Qian 赵倩, as her best friend stuck in a rich but loveless marriage, adds some bite. In a small but crucial role, as the husband’s amorata, TV actress Wang Moxi 王沫溪 contributes some of the most affecting scenes, including a brief flashback opposite Li.
The film’s main weakness is its lack of real emotional punch: though it’s an exceptionally well-crafted film, it also has a coolness (also visible in Wang’s direction of Vegetate) that sometimes works against it. More music, which is only used in the latter moments, would have helped. Otherwise, it’s technically fine, with widescreen photography by Liu Younian 刘又年 (Vegetate) catching the Yangtze metropolis of Wuhan in a natural way and editing by Feng Wen 冯文 (Wang’s regular cutter, and wife) smoothly invisible.
The Chinese title, explained in the film, is a proverb for extreme emotional pain, literally meaning “Ten Thousand Arrows Pierce the Heart”. It’s also the title of a 1971 Shaw Bros. martial arts movie known in English as The Oath of Death.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Antaeus Film (CN), China Movie Channel (CN), Youth Film Studio (CN). Produced by Beijing Antaeus Film (CN), Youth Film Studio (CN).
Script: Wu Nan. Novella: Fang Fang. Photography: Liu Younian. Editing: Feng Wen. Music: Yang Sili. Art direction: Bao Hao. Sound: Wang Changrui, Lou Yatao, Wang Xuliang. Executive direction: Liu Yang, Deng Yijun.
Cast: Yen Bingyan (Li Baoli), Jiao Gang (Ma Xuewu, Li Baoli’s husband), Chen Gang (Jianjian, gangster), Zhao Qian (Wan Xiaojing, Li Baoli’s best friend), Wang Moxi (Zhou Fen), Li Xian (Ma Wenzhao/Xiaobao, aged 18), Yang Mingqiu (Madam Xing), Sun Zhongjiang (deputy factory head), Zhang Ruitian (Li Baoli’s boss), Huang Shouxia (boss lady), Liu Shanliang (teacher), Yu Longgang (removal foreman), He Minglan (Ma Xuewu’s mother), Zhu Feng, Wang Peng (removal men), Ma Yuewu, Cao Chao (policemen), Huang Kun (school security guard), Hu Lunbo, Zhang Qi, Li Bing, Zhang Heping (gangsters), Liu Hui (singer), Lv Cimin (boss), Xu Rong (Zhou Fen’s husband), Chen Changmin (noodle-restaurant manager), Liu Meixiang (breakfast-shop manageress), Wang Tiange (Xiaobao, aged 8).
Premiere: Tokyo Film Festival (Competition), 22 Oct 2012.
Release: China, 16 Nov 2012.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 22 Oct 2012.)