China Affair
她们的名字叫红
China, 2013, colour, 1.85:1, 93 mins.
Director: Zhang Ming 章明.
Rating: 7/10.
Accessible, discreetly ironic portrait of a young American “lost” in central China.
STORY
Wushan, central China, the present day. Lucas (Philip Burkhart), a young American from Wisconsin who’s been wandering around China for 3-4 years and learning Mandarin, is on a boat going down the Yangtze River to Yichang. On board he gets talking to a young local woman, Wang Hong (Dai Ruqian), who says she’s an air hostess and is getting off the boat at Wushan to visit her family. Lucas also gets off at Wushan and tries to find her in the town, helped by local policeman Wu (Liao Xi). Lucas’ dream is not only to find Wang Hong – for whom he’s fallen – but also to open a coffee house in Wushan. She suddenly turns up at his lodgings one day, “performs” for him as an “air hostess” for money, and then leaves. Meanwhile, Lucas is interviewed for the local paper by blank-faced young government employee Li Hong (Zou Qiongdi), who was a classmate of Wang Hong. Li Hong later takes him on a boat trip with Wang Hong to the Little Three Gorges. When Lucas mistakenly insults Wang Hong in jest, she runs off and disappears again. Wu tells Li Hong to help Lucas find Wang Hong again, but when Lucas suggests she moves into his lodgings Wang Hong refuses. With only four days left on his current visa, Lucas discovers that Wang Hong has left Wushan to visit her father and mother (Wang Daxue, Ren Maoying) in the mountains. Li Hong offers to drive him there.
REVIEW
The rapid commercialisation of China’s home film market in recent years has seen quite a few directors (such as Teng Huatao 滕华涛, Zhou Yaowu 周耀武, Lin Lisheng 林黎胜), who initially made their names with “festival films”, turn more commercial or at least make their film language more accessible – generally for the better. Latest examples are cameraman-turned-director Liu Jie 刘杰 (previously known for Courthouse on Horseback 马背上的法庭, 2006, Judge 透析, 2009, and ethnic-minority drama Beyond the Clouds 碧罗雪山, 2010) with the utterly charming high-school movie Young Style 青春派 (2013), and also Zhang Ming 章明, here with China Affair 她们的名字叫红.
The elder of the two, Zhang, now in his early 50s, made his name on the international festival circuit with the misty psychological drama In Expectation 巫山云雨 (1996, aka Stormclouds over Wushan), set in the touristy area of the Yangtze River known as the Three Gorges. Stronger on atmosphere than actual drama, the film did reveal a distinct film-making voice at the time, though Zhang failed to follow up that promise with his subsequent films Weekend Plot 秘语十七小时 (2001) and Before Born 结果 (2005). After several years’ break he showed signs of a resurrection with the interesting Folk Songs Singing 郎在对门唱山歌 (2011), but it’s with his latest movie, China Affair, that he manages to really reach out to an audience at an emotional level while still retaining elements of a personal film-making style.
Returning to the setting of In Expectation, the movie starts on a passenger boat from Chongqing (Zhang’s own birthplace) where an itinerant American, Lucas, who’s been drifting round southeast China for 3-4 years, starts a conversation with a young woman, Wang Hong, who claims to be an air hostess visiting her family in Wushan. Lucas follows her there, tries to find her again, and finds that a foreigner’s “China Dream” is not necessarily the same as a local’s, as he tries to open a coffee house in the town and hook up again with his “dream girl”.
In between having some fun with Lucas’ American ingenuousness (he’s a typically naive young guy from Wisconsin) and his efforts to speak Chinese, the film is basically about the two faces of modern China – the official and the individual – and the problems when one confuses the two. As he searches for Wang Hong, he’s helped by another young woman called Hong – local government employee, Li Hong – plus a friendly policeman, Wu; but all is not as it first appears to Lucas. The American mistakes female friendliness for physical attraction and professional help for genuine friendship. As he negotiates the smoke and mirrors of an unfamiliar society, and waits and waits for the mysterious Wang Hong to contact him, he finally realises that life, too, is a process of waiting.
As well as its Chinese title (which roughly means “Two Women Called Hong”), the film has an ironic humour that is new to Zhang’s movies – especially in the character of the blank-faced apparatchik Li Hong, beautifully played in deadpan style by Zou Qiongdi 邹琼帝 as a someone who would rather die than actually crack a smile. As the other “Hong” in Lucas’ life, Dai Ruqian 代汝茜 makes Wang Hong a lively, attractive screen presence – friendly but emotionally unfathomable – while Liao Xi 廖希 as the chummy but professional policeman makes a good buffer between the two women.
Philip Burkart makes Lucas a little too reserved to truly identify with, and the early jokes about his poor Mandarin (confusing simple words and tones) are negated by him speaking the language fairly well soon afterwards. (It’s also unbelievable, for someone who’s been around the Yangtze for some time that, at one point in the script, he has to be told about the famous Little Three Gorges 小三峡.) A diversion to Lucas’ home in the US and a backstory involving his friendship with an itinerant Ukrainian in Chongqing also break up the natural flow of the film in the second half.
Most importantly, however, the film has none of the self-conscious, arty longueurs of Zhang’s earlier films, and he shows a natural affinity for the landscape of Wushan that he knows so well, with natural, flavoursome photography of its streets and interiors by d.p. Wang Meng 王猛.
CREDITS
Presented by Xi’an Jiafang Film & TV (CN), Beijing Duo Xiang Jin Culture (CN). Produced by Wushan County Municipal Government (CN), Xi’an Jiafang Film & TV (CN), Beijing Duo Xiang Jin Culture (CN).
Script: Zhang Ming, Qin Haiyan. Photography: Wang Meng. Editing: Zhong Yijuan, Tian Lei. Music: none. Art direction: Li Yangjun. Sound: Liu Xianfeng, Liu Yang, He Bin. US photography: Steve Gruszecki. Executive director: Wu Na.
Cast: Philip Burkart (Lucas), Dai Ruqian (Wang Hong), Zou Qiongdi (Li Hong), Liao Xi (Wu, policeman), Wang Daxue (Wang Hong’s father), Ren Maoying (Wang Hong’s mother), Liu Dayong (coffee-house owner), Wang Qiang (minister of promotion), Philip John Burkart (Lucas’ father), Barbara Jan Burkart (Lucas’ mother), Arimindo Luis Ribeiro (“Huang Feihong”), Qian Qiuyun (boat waitress), Yi Ping (hotel owner), Marharyta Siniak (Anna).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Focus China), 18 Jun 2013.
Release: China, tba.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 27 Jun 2013.)