Damp Season
回南天
China, 2020, colour, 1.85:1, 107 mins.
Director: Gao Ming 高鸣.
Rating: 3/10.
Typical slice of arty alienation centred on a young couple in sweaty Shenzhen.
STORY
Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, southern China, the present day. Young couple Liu Xiaodong (Huang Yucong) and Du Juan (Chen Xuanyu) live together in a tiny flat; neither is very communicative. He is a security guard at an abandoned theme park-cum-reservoir; she works for a florist as a flower arranger. Having studied wushu and dance with his Master (Huang Yongjie), Liu Xiaodong used to perform at a small outdoor theatre called The Little Stage; Du Juan used to sell tickets at a small booth there. He still dreams of resuscitating the theatre, which has now fallen to pieces with the space used for parking cars. One day Liu Xiaodong sees a young woman, Yuanyuan (Lin Zixi), who’s been releasing small fish into the reservoir and filming herself doing so; the fish always die as the water is heavily polluted. Du Juan is regularly sent to the house of the wealthy Long (Liang Long) to do flower arranging. Long’s butler (Wu Quan) insists that she first showers in the house’s bathroom; when she keeps refusing, Long has a chat with her. Meanwhile, Liu Xiaodong is sacked from his job without any warning; he later has dinner with his Master, who still performs his Monkey King dance in restaurants. Between odd jobs – for which Du Juan makes his face up like a clown – Liu Xiaodong watches Yuanyuan, whose real interest is dance, on her streaming channel. One morning he drops by her flat for a chat. Later he visits her again, and tries to talk to her about Du Juan. As Liu Xiaodong gradually gets to know Yuanyuan, Du Juan also gets to know Long.
REVIEW
A typical slice of arty alienation in which the viewer ends up no wiser at the end about the main characters’ lack of communication, Damp Season 回南天 is a technically professional but utterly empty first feature by Shenzhen-based film-maker Gao Ming 高鸣 (real name: Liu Gaoming 刘高明) who previously worked as a designer as well as directing the feature-length documentary Paigu 排骨 (2005) and short feature A Song 阿松 (2007), both centred on individual economic migrants within China. Fittingly premiered at the 2020 Rotterdam festival, it was released in the Mainland this summer to microscopic business (RMB217,000).
The film begins and ends with the sound of heavy sub-tropical rain, and is set during the sweaty change between spring and summer in Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong. Despite living together and occasionally having desultory sex, young couple Liu Xiaodong (newcomer Huang Yucong黄宇聪) and Du Juan (Chen Xuanyu 陈宣宇, ditto) inhabit separate worlds: he’s a security guard at an abandoned amusement park-cum-reservoir, while she is a flower arranger for a florist. Like the humid, overcast weather, dialogue is dull and heavy, even as each slowly gets to know a more mature stranger – he a beautiful dancer (Taiwan’s Lin Zixi 林子熙, aka Lin Zijun 林子君) with a video blog, she a wealthy customer (veteran Mainland stage performer Liang Long 梁龙) with weird habits and a weirder butler. Conversations typically lead nowhere, the viewer often has to fill the gaps, and the characters often act irrationally (when Liu Xiaodong does part-time jobs on his motorbike, he adopts clown makeup).
Given little to work from, the cast perform in a mechanical manner. Camera set-ups are generally fixed, though takes are not grindingly long and the pacing is not slow. Unfortunately, there’s an almost total lack of any content or narrative tension. The only music (by Luo Keju 罗可居) is some chordal electronics when the older women dances alone in her spartan flat. D.p. was Japan’s Otsuka Ryuji 大塚龙治, who’s worked on several Mainland indies including the equally sullen The Foolish Bird 笨鸟 (2017) by his wife, Mainland film-maker Huang Ji 黄骥, and When Night Falls 我还有话要说 (2012, dir. Ying Liang 应亮); editing was supervised by Taiwan veteran Liao Qingsong 廖庆松. One of the two creative producers 监制 was Tibetan Chinese arthouse name Pema Tseden 万玛才旦. The film’s Chinese title roughly means “Return to the South”.
CREDITS
Presented by Pokwai Pictures (Shenzhen) (CN), Factory Gate Films (Shanghai) (CN). Produced by Pokwai Pictures (Shenzhen) (CN).
Script: Gao Ming, Liu Bing. Photography: Otsuka Ryuji. Editing: Liao Qingsong. Music: Luo Keju. Art direction: Zhao Xinyi. Sound: Tan Jianfeng, Lou Kun.
Cast: Huang Yucong (Liu Xiaodong), Chen Xuanyu (Du Juan), Liang Long (Long), Lin Zixi (Yuanyuan), Huang Yongjie (Monkey King), Meng Gu (head security guard), Lu Fujie (young security guard), Feng Huanyun (security guard at park), Wu Quan (Long’s butler), Tian Xing (security guard at temple), Zeng Liang (flowershop owner).
Premiere: Rotterdam Film Festival (Bright Future), 27 Jan 2020.
Release: China, 24 Jun 2022.