Blood 13
血十三
China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 99 mins.
Director: Li Lingcong 李聆聪.
Rating: 6/10.
Quirky, low-budget serial-killer mystery sustains interest until a conventional resolution.
STORY
A city in northern China, the present day. Waitress-cum-prostitute Cheng Xiao (Dai Yafei) is found hanging upside down in her underwear, drained of blood, in the bathroom of her dingy flat. Police detective Xing Min (Huang Lu), the daughter of a policeman, and her assistant Mei Shuo (Li Heng) investigate and are joined by Zhou Minsheng (Xie Gang), a veteran detective from out of town who’s been assigned to the case by the provincial police authority, as the killing may be linked to a case he worked on 15 years ago. Xing Min resents his intrusion but is forced to accept it by her boss (Ren Mingsheng). The victim’s younger sister, student Cheng Yao (Chang Xiaoran), says she and her boyfriend, fellow student Liu Yang (Li Bin), had planned to drop by Cheng Xiao’s flat the previous evening to pick up RMB50,000 that she had promised Cheng Yao for tuition fees; but Liu Yang did not turn up and has since gone missing. CCTV outside the building shows four arrivals that night: taxi driver Ke Zhenghua (Qian Bo), who dropped off Cheng Xiao and an unidentified fat man; a man in black; and Liu Yang, who arrived later. During a team briefing by Xing Min, a hysterical Liu Yang bursts in, covered in blood, but denies killing Cheng Xiao. He says he found her dead and saw a red dress near the body. Xing Min revisits the crime scene and, after a chase, arrests a man who turns out to be Cheng Xiao’s neighbour, Li Tianxiao, who was also one of her clients. The police then discover that Cheng Xiao stole RMB50,000 from the restaurant she worked at, and the neighbour says he saw her hiding it in her flat on the afternoon prior to her murder. He also identifies the man in black (Qi Meng) as coming to his flat by mistake that evening. The police trace some of the notes to the wife (Shang Yun) of Gao (Chen Xinhua), a high-up in the finance ministry, who is identified as the fat man and is brought in for questioning. Xing Min eventually uncovers his role in the whole money issue. But when two more prostitutes’ bodies are found, Xing Min decides – without telling her boss but but with Zhou Minsheng’s help – to pose as a prostitute in a red dress to uncover the suspected serial killer.
REVIEW
A quirky serial-killer drama that makes the most of its low budget and offbeat touches, Blood 13 血十三 manages to sustain interest and dramatic tension thanks to its lead cast and quick-footed script before a disappointingly conventional ending. Those final 10-15 minutes aside, this is still well worth a look and shows what can done to the hoary old police procedural when some of the rules are disregarded. Not surprisingly, the modest production didn’t even register a blip on the Mainland’s box-office radar, hawling in less than half a million RMB.
It’s the first visible feature by Beijing-born Li Lingcong 李聆聪, 30, who studied film at the University of Southern California and previously directed the unreleased rom-com Simple Days 小日子, shot in 2014. The off-centre tone of Blood 13 – from a screenplay by former Beijing policewoman Hu Tu 胡涂 – is set from the start as the camera prowls a seedy district in an unnamed northern China town and then cuts straight to the detective entering the gloomy blood-spattered crime scene with her weak-stomached assistant. An older detective who’s also been assigned to the case is introduced, and in a rapid series of scenes there and in police HQ an edgy dynamic is set up between the younger detective and the older man, with the former’s impetuousness balanced by the latter’s calmness and neither getting on with the other.
The counter-casting of Sichuan-born Huang Lu 黄璐 as the younger detective is all part of the film’s off-centre feel: better known for appearing in indie/arty productions (Blind Mountain 盲山, 2007; She, a Chinese 中国姑娘, 2009; Here There 这里 那里, 2011; Dog Days 三伏天, 2016), the 35-year-old actress simply looks out of place in the role – which, given that she’s playing a consummate outsider, is half the point. Neither too tough nor too soft, too bolshie nor too deferential, Huang underplays where many would have slid into pre-existing moulds; lightning flashbacks hint at a troubled background for this daughter of a policeman (played by Huang’s own father) but that’s all. Similarly, weather-beaten Xie Gang 谢钢, 67, more often wheeled out for prestige historical productions, underplays the veteran, out-of-town cop who’s been imposed on the investigation but adds much sly humour and personal doubt instead of just being an older-and-wiser stereotype. Among the supporting cast, reliable character actor Qian Bo 钱波 is fine as a helpful taxi driver, as is Chen Xinhua 陈新华 as an initially arrogant bureaucrat; as the lead’s boyish assistant, however, Li Heng 李恒 is outclassed.
The film’s small grace-notes on the genre may pass general viewers by, or just look clumsy; but they’re all part of the film’s subtle quirkiness. Time and again, Blood 13 bends the rules as if it’s the most natural thing in the world: the killer is revealed to the audience halfway through, but the script still raises doubts whether it’s true or not; Huang’s character simply disappears for most of the final third; and what on earth is in the wooden box that the old detective carries around? Beneath the film’s apparently simple, modest, procedural surface, there’s considerable slight-of-hand at work, both in mood and characterisation; even more impressively, it still manages to hold the viewer’s interest when bending the rules.
Visually, the film is also hardly conventional, with plain, simple locations, no establishing shots, and grey, hand-held photography by Japan-born, LA-based d.p. Haga Hiroyuki 芳贺弘之 (marathon-runner drama 10,000 Miles 一万公里的约定, 2016; horror Inside 惊悚小说, 2017) that’s not too jittery and doesn’t look to Japanese crime films for its look. Editing by US-based Uchida Takashi 内田尧 is lean and tight, and so-so chase music by Thailand’s Pantawit Kiangsiri (b&w sci-fi The Secret of Immortal Code 伊阿索密码, 2018) is sparsely used. What a pity, therefore that the film-makers just seem to give up in the final minutes, as if they’ve simply run out of ideas, and fall back on the very cliches they’ve seemingly been avoiding for the previous 80 minutes.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Astrocompass Media (CN).
Script: Hu Tu. Photography: Haga Hiroyuki. Editing: Uchida Takashi. Music: Pantawit Kiangsiri. Music production: Zhao Zizhu. Art direction: Wu Wei. Costumes: Meng Jia, Liu Ningyang. Styling: Liu Yuting. Sound: Zhang Qing, Li Hequn. Action: Wang Xinfeng. Car stunts: Du Zihao. Production advice: Wu Ying. Executive direction: Yuan Zirui.
Cast: Huang Lu (Xing Min), Xie Gang (Zhou Minsheng), Qian Bo (Ke Zhenghua), Li Heng (Mei Shuo), Li Bin (Liu Yang), Huang Jiaqiao (Xing Min’s father), Ma Yimian (Li Chun), Dai Yafei (Cheng Xiao), Chang Xiaoran (Cheng Yao, Cheng Xiao’s younger sister), Fang Cheng (complaining man), Liu Jinglu (Ke Zhenghua’s wife), Wang Xinfeng (busy man), Qi Meng (man in black), Li Donghao (forensic pathologist), Wang Xinhe (Guan Hong), Meng Linghe (brawny man), Hou Meiling (madam), Chen Xinhua (Gao, finance ministry bureau chief), Ren Mingsheng (police chief), Chu Changwei, Zhang Yang (policemen), Zhang Ziran (Guo Lili), Zhou Jing (policewoman), Wang Xiaotian (forensic examiner), Zhang Guangyao (Xiaochen), Shang Yun (Gao’s wife), Zhu Deshun (Li Chun’s father), Hou Yibin (skinny man), Tao Ye (doctor), Liu Fanying, Deng Yan (nurses), Liu Daoqing (second forensic pathologist).
Premiere: Beijing Film Festival (Special Collection: Female Power), 18 Apr 2018.
Release: China, 15 Jun 2018.