The Story of Xi Bao

喜宝

China, 2020, colour, 16:9, 109 mins.

Director: Wang Danyang 王丹阳.

Rating: 4/10.

Nicely shot but bloodless melodrama has a weak female lead and generally uninvolving characters.

STORY

China, the present day. On a plane from Hungary, Jiang Xibao (Guo Caijie), who is studying law at TC College in Budapest and is coming home for her summer vacation, meets rich girl Xu Conghui (Li Yanman). The latter, who’s met by her family’s servants, offers to drop Jiang Xibao home. There, Jiang Xibao is told by her aunt (Wang Chunmei) that her mother (Li Yanshan) is dying. Her father, a drifter, has not been heard of for years and her mother has no more money left for Jiang Xibao to continue her studies. Before dying, her mother tells her to find her father, who’s sure to take of her. A month later Xu Congui calls and invites Jiang Xibao to a party celebrating her engagement to Song Jiaming (Gao Ren). The same day Jiang Xibao’s father (Yang Qiyu) suddenly turns up and, when she realises he’s only after his late wife’s insurance policy, Jiang Xibao kicks him out. That evening Jiang Xibao attends Xu Conghui’s party at the family’s lavish home, where she’s introduced to Xu Conghui’s elder brother Xu Congshu (Cao Enqi) and their elder sister Xu Congqi (Gao Meiyao). Bored by the rich company, she gets drunk and pours out her thoughts to a man she thinks is the gardener but is actually the childrens’ father, the widowed, super-wealthy Xu Cunzi (Zhang Guozhu). He likes her frankness and over dinner a few days later proposes to her. Initially offended, she later accepts when he says he has no time left to go through the usual courting; she says she wants to continue her studies in Budapest and, as part of their “deal”, he buys her a large diamond ring. One night the emotionally unstable Xu Congshu confesses his love for Jiang Xibao and says his father blames him for his mother’s death. She rejects him. Returning to her studies in Hungary, she lives in a large house owned by Xu Cunzi, who’s also instructed Song Jiaming to accompany her and look after her needs. A desk in the house of full of US$100 bills. One day Xu Cunzi turns up, closely followed by Xu Congshu, who calls Jiang Xibao a whore. Xu Cunzi has a heart attack and goes to Zurich to recover. Later Jiang Xibao joins him there, and the two finally sleep together. Even though Song Jiaming by this time has fallen in love with Jiang Xibao – and Xu Conghui knows it – the couple’s wedding goes ahead in Hungary. Xu Cunzi warns Jiang Xibao to stick to their “deal”, as there is a price to be paid for all the wealth she now has. Then one day Xu Cunzi takes Song Jiaming and Jiang Xibao on a hunting expedition.

REVIEW

From its opening scene of Taiwan actress Guo Caijie 郭采洁 [Amber Kuo] lounging on a bed of US$100 bills, you just know that The Story of Xi Bao 喜宝 is going to require several leaps of the imagination. One of those films that warns money doesn’t buy happiness while also revelling in every visual opportunity of extreme wealth, it marks a low-wattage directorial debut by Mainland writer Wang Danyang 王丹阳 – perhaps best known for her 2010 novel 盛开 (literally, “In Full Bloom”) – who treats the big screen as just an excuse for formally composed visuals and shows no talent at creating engaging characters to fill them. Without the cute’n’quirky mannerisms that have often helped her in the past, Guo, 35, simply lacks the screen presence to keep such a leaky boat afloat, and is comprehensively acted off the screen by Taiwan veteran Zhang Guozhu 张国柱, 72, as the sugar-daddy who plucks her penniless student from poverty and keeps her in well-padded luxury. Shot in autumn 2018 and released two years later, it took a face-saving but hardly notable RMB113 million in the Mainland.

It’s actually the second adaptation of a 1979 novel, 喜宝 (“Xibao”), by Yi Shu 亦舒, 74 (see left). A Shanghai-born, Hong Kong-raised and now Canada-based writer – and younger sister of writer/scripter Ni Kuang 倪匡 – her prolific output was especially popular with female readers in the 1970s and 1980s. The Story of Hay Bo (“Hay Bo” being the Cantonese pronunciation of the title character’s name) was released in 1988 and scored only a meh HK$2.6 million (see poster, left). Directed by (the otherwise unknown) Li Xinyi 李欣颐, it starred onetime Taiwan heartthrob Ke Junxiong 柯俊雄 as the sugar-daddy and Hong Kong actress Li Yanshan 黎燕珊 as the title character who becomes his feisty plaything. Ke, then in his early 40s, was majorly miscast as a billionaire who’s “almost 60” and Li, a jobbing actress in her mid-20s in her first leading role, hardly up to the demands of the role. Luxuriantly shot in the UK by d.p. Bao Qiming 鲍起鸣 (aka Bao Dexi 鲍德熹 [Peter Pau]) and Hong Kong by the equally noted Pan Hengsheng 潘恒生 [Poon Hang-seng], it looks nowadays like a just-average melodrama of the time, oozing luxury lifestyle and western cultural trappings.

Substituting Budapest and Zurich for the 1988 film’s Cambridge and London, and making several other smallish plot changes, Wang’s version, co-written with Liang Lulu 梁璐璐, makes the character of Xibao less obviously trashy and manipulative, but the petite Guo, though fine when posing against beautiful locations in great clothes, can’t fill her character with the little that the script provides. The dialogue is often as equally toe-curling as in the earlier film and, despite the soupy, romantic score by Hong Kong-born veteran Chris Babida and all the beautifully shot settings and artifacts (which, for some obscure reason, include famous vintage cars, such as one used in the 1955 US comedy The Seven Year Itch), the film is curiously cold and uninvolving, with almost no chemistry happening on screen.

Guo, whose popularity peaked in the early 2010s with films like Au Revoir Taipei 一页台北 (2010) and the Tiny Times 小时代 quartet (2013-15), tries very hard but can’t even equal her most notable serious role, in the 2014 (Sex) Appeal 寒蝉效應, ending up a blank cipher; Zhang shows an effortless, sometimes dangerously-edged paternalism but is almost acting on his own in the film; and the rest of the wooden cast pop in an out as if in an updated wenyi pian 文艺片 from 40 years ago. (As a tip of the hat to the earlier version, Li, now in her mid-50s, cameos as the heroine’s dying mother.) Despite apparently being set in the present, the whole film has a curiously abstract, timeless quality, with Guo’s retro wardrobe, the vintage cars and many of the characters’ manners all harking back to some earlier era.

Overall, photography by Hong Kong veteran Lin Guohua 林国华 [Ardy Lam] is sharp and colourful but somewhat lacking in atmosphere; editing by Tan Xiangyuan 檀向媛 – a regular associate of Hong Kong’s Xu Hongyu 许宏宇 [Derek Hui]) – is smooth, but the film, which is 15 minutes longer than the 1988 version, could easily lose the same amount.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing The Aiaxl Films (CN), Beijing Daylight Peak Film Cause (CN).

Script: Wang Danyang, Liang Lulu. Novel: Yi Shu. Photography: Lin Guohua [Ardy Lam]. Editing: Tan Xiangyuan. Music: Chris Babida. Art direction: Ma Xin, Yu Peng. Costumes: Jing Mufan. Styling: Fan Jun. Sound: Zhang Hongyang, Zhang He. Executive direction: Fang Yingliang.

Cast: Guo Caijie [Amber Kuo] (Jiang Xibao), Zhang Guozhu (Xu Cunzi), Gao Ren (Song Jiaming), Li Yanman (Xu Conghui), Cao Enqi (Xu Congshu), Gao Shuyao (Xu Congqi), Li Yanshan (Jiang Yongli, Jiang Xibao’s mother), Zhao Xueqin (Feng Yu, housekeeper), Yang Qiyu (Jiang Xibao’s father), Wang Chunmei (Tian, Jiang Xibao’s aunt), Ruan Ju (Xiaoting), Wang Jiahe (woman demanding money).

Release: China, 16 Oct 2020.