Xiao Mei
小美
Taiwan, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 95 mins.
Director: Huang Rongsheng 黄荣升.
Rating: 6/10.
Intriguing idea, reconstructing a missing woman’s life via interviews, is too shallowly scripted.
STORY
Taibei, the present day. A young woman, Qin Renmei, aka Xiaomei (Rao Xingxing), has gone missing. Her landlord (Chen Yiwen) describes how, after a year, she began to look strange and then didn’t pay her rent for a while; when he went to her room, he found it full of syringes and diapers; she never returned. Her boyfriend (Liu Guanting), a motorbike courier, says he knew she had a drugs habit when he met her about a year ago; after visiting a love hotel, they argued and he never saw her again. Her elder half-brother (Na Dou), who works in an alleyway restaurant, describes how she suddenly reappeared in his life after some 20 years; she looked troubled but disappeared without saying why. Lin Wande (Wu Jianhe), her former classmate and boyfriend, and now a boxing coach, says they’d moved to Taibei together but then split up; when they re-met later, they started doing drugs together; about a week ago he visited her flat but she was long gone. Yin (Yin Xin), owner of a clothes shop, employed her about a year ago; she tried to keep Xiaomei off drugs but without success. A company manager (Qiu Longjie) remembers how she came for an interview but had to rush off when her bladder burst; he later invited her out and they were involved in a car crash together. A spiritualist (Zhang Shaohuai) recalls how Xiaomei used to talk about her “four friends”, who may not have existed. Xiaomei’s mother (Ke Shuqin) says Xiaomei lost her father at sea when she was five or six; she doesn’t know where her daughter is now. A photographer (Wu Kangren) describes how he was taking some wedding portraits by the sea one day and Xiaomei appeared in the background by the shore.
REVIEW
The first feature of Taiwan commercials and TV director Huang Rongsheng 黄荣升, 43, Xiao Mei 小美 is an interesting idea that’s not fully worked out at a script level. An investigation into the disappearance of a young woman via interviews with nine people who knew her, it’s basically a shaggy-dog story, but one without any final, revelatory twist. After an intriguing first half, the air soon starts to go out of the bag as the titular character increasingly refuses to swim into focus. By the end, the viewer feels distinctly shortchanged.
Though written and directed by Huang, the film is produced and shot by Zhong Menghong 钟孟宏, a Taiwan director in his own right who followed his impressive debut Parking 停车 (2008) with a series of arty mystery-dramas (The Fourth Portrait 第四张画, 2010; Soul 失魂, 2013; Godspeed 一路顺风, 2016) that also suffered from undernourished scripts. What promises to be a fascinating voyage into the soul of a vanished young woman (occasionally glimpsed in flashbacks) is basically all over by the fifth or sixth interview, by which time the viewer has learned only that she was a drug-taking drifter. Thereafter, the film tries to mix up the formula a bit, introducing a spiritual element which doesn’t lead anywhere, but the audience learns little more of interest.
As well as the lack of any Big Twist, there’s no hidden key revealed to Xiaomei’s personality, which finally has no depth at all. It’s somehow typical of the film’s accent on style over substance that the final (redundant) interview is with a wedding photographer, ending the film on a woolly white-out. And also that the cast’s most experienced performer – Ke Shuqin 柯淑勤, 50, from Bad Moon 恶月 (2005), Din Tao: Leader of the Parade 阵头 (2012), Touch of the Light 逆光飞翔 (2012), To the Fore 破风 (2015) – is given a nothing role near the end as the girl’s mother.
Zhong’s photography (under his usual d.p. pseudonym Nakashima Nagao 中岛长雄) is full of resonant, saturated colours, with the camera sometimes using a fixed vantage-point, sometimes not. The meatiest performance is the first – director Chen Yiwen 陈以文 (The Cabbie 运转手之恋, 2000) as Xiaomei’s slightly sleazy landlord who ends up complaining how hard his life is. Unlike most of the other interviewees, Chen’s is a fully developed character, and raises the possibility that the film could be as much about the city of Taibei (its characters, its seasons, its moods) than it is simply about Xiaomei. Among other players, Na Dou 纳豆, a regular in Zhong’s films, is okay as Xiaomei’s dozy half-brother.
CREDITS
Presented by Studio Romance (TW), Creamfilm (TW). Produced by Studio Romance (TW).
Script: Huang Rongsheng. Photography: Nakashima Nagao [Zhong Menghong]. Editing: Lai Xiuxiong, Wen Zhiming. Music: Lu Lvming. Art direction: Liao Guohui. Costumes: Lin Ling. Sound: Du Juntang, Chen Weiliang, Du Duzhi, Wu Shuyao. Second-unit photography: Huang Rongsheng.
Cast: Chen Yiwen (landlord), Liu Guanting (Xiaomei’s boyfriend), Na Dou (Xiaomei’s elder half-brother), Wu Jianhe (Lin Wande, Xiaomei’s ex-boyfriend), Yin Xin (Yin, clothes-shop owner), Qiu Longjie (manager), Zhang Shaohuai (spiritualist), Ke Shuqin (Xiaomei’s mother), Wu Kangren (photographer), Rao Xingxing (Qin Renmei/Xiaomei), Huang Xinyao (off-screen interviewer).
Premiere: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama), 17 Feb 2018.
Release: Taiwan, 1 Dec 2018.