Up in the Wind
等风来
China, 2013, colour, 2.35:1, 108 mins.
Director: Teng Huatao 滕华涛.
Rating: 6/10.
Handsome but weakly written road movie doesn’t generate much lead chemistry.
STORY
Shanghai, the present day. Cheng Yumeng (Ni Ni) is a food columnist for glossy lifestyle magazine Chic who pretends to be a wealthy sophisticate in front of friends but is actually a smalltown girl who’s trying to make it in the big city and barely exists on a monthly salary of RMB2,000. When her editor-in-chief, Lily (Liu Zi), takes her off an assignment to Tuscany, Italy, and offers her a travel article in Nepal instead, Cheng Yumeng has no choice but to accept. Arriving in Kathmandu with a tour group of photographers and middle-aged Taiwan women, she makes friends with the only other young woman, Li Meilan (Liu Yase), who’s trying to forget being dumped by her boyfriend (Ju Xiang). Also in the group is spoiled rich kid Wang Can (Jing Boran), who’s just been kicked out by his father after he capsized his arranged marriage. His arrogant behaviour so upsets Cheng Yumeng that she takes off on her own to a wildlife resort in Chitwan. There she hears from Lily that her article needs to be re-written. She gets further depressed when Wang Can, who’s also split from the group, turns up and the two start arguing when he makes fun of her real name – Cheng Tianshuang (“Happy-Go-Lucky Cheng”) – in her passport. She’s forced to join him next day in his hired car and, after being stuck on the road due to an anti-government demonstration, they spend a night in the open. Rejoining the tour group, they’re held up by another demonstration, which Wang Can joins and is only narrowly rescued from when it turns violent. Finally the group arrives in Pokhara, at the foot of the Himalayas.
REVIEW
Despite luxuriant photography, and a few moments when the dialogue catches fire, Up in the Wind 等风来 fails to create the same magic director Teng Huatao 滕华涛 and young Beijing writer Bao Jingjing 鲍鲸鲸, 27, conjured up in their hit rom-com Love Is Not Blind 失恋33天 (2011). That previous collaboration relied a lot on the terrific chemistry between its leads, actor Wen Zhang 文章 and actress Bai Baihe 白百何, as well as an unpretentious charm in knitting together an episodic script. Wind, alas, has little chemistry between its leads – up-and-coming actress Ni Ni 倪妮 (The Flowers of War 金陵十三钗, 2011) and actor-boybander Jing Boran 井柏然 (in his first leading role) – and can’t make its mind up whether it’s a light drama, a light comedy or the rom-com it keeps promising to be.
In the event, the rom scarcely gets off the ground between Ni’s wannabe rich-and-famous journalist and Jing’s spoiled rich-kid as they’re thrown together in a tour group to Nepal, and the com largely comes from the old chestnut of Chinese tourists’ bad behaviour abroad rather than from the relationship between the two leads, who spend a lot of time snarling at each other and dissecting each other’s weaknesses. Bao’s screenplay – from her 2013 novel published a couple of months before the film’s release – concentrates more on staking out its characters’ moral and ethical parameters rather than concentrating on building some chemistry between the two. He laughs at her pretensions and careerism, while she accuses him of being a typical second-generation rich kid 富二代. They’re both familiar archetypes in modern-day Mainland cinema – which is fine – but Bao’s script doesn’t allow them to evolve into anything more interesting during their journey together.
The richly coloured photography by Cao Dun 曹盾, who shot Teng’s artier debut One Hundred… 100个…… (2001) as well as Love, and the film’s attentive score by Lin Chaoyang 林潮阳 and Ding Wei 丁薇 (also Love) ensure the movie is an easy ride on an audiovisual level: from the busy streets of Kathmandu, via Chitwan National Park, to Pokhara in the Himalayan foothills, Cao’s widescreen compositions are a treat to look at. But they can’t hide the fact that not much is going on between the principals and that the script keeps losing focus and never develops any clear dramatic arc. There’s some talk of “happiness” – the project was originally called 幸福旅行团 (literally, “Happiness Tour Group”), referring to the fact that Nepal is meant to have a high rating for the emotion – and a lot more about values. And then it just ends with the two leads paragliding: a mystical moment beforehand, as they “wait for the wind to come” (the meaning of the film’s Chinese title), doesn’t have its intended power because the viewer still isn’t emotionally engaged with either of them.
Ni, who proved in the sweet-and-sour Love Will Tear Us Apart 我想和你好好的 (2013) that she’s capable of sympathetic playing, nicely steers the audience in her direction after an off-putting start. Jing, however, doesn’t shift much from being an obnoxious rich kid, so gives her little to play off against. Ni’s best scenes, in fact, are with 25-year-old actress-singer Liu Yase 刘雅瑟 (the tomboy in So Young 致我们终将逝去的青春, 2013), playing a casualty of a botched relationship who looks up to the supposedly more worldly journalist for advice. Popping up throughout the film, actress Liu Zi 刘孜 (from the Teng-produced Forever Young 怒放之青春再见, 2014) has some low-key fun as the journalist’s hard-arsed editor who isn’t too sophisticated to quietly pop out for street food during a swanky Shanghai reception.
Flashbacks in desaturated colour sit uneasily within the narrative and further hinder the movie’s already unsteady flow. A plot development of the tour group being held up by Nepalis demonstrating for better living standards also seems a clumsy way of underlining the vague theme of what makes people happy.
CREDITS
Presented by Perfect World Pictures (CN), Beijing iTime Production (CN), iCinema (CN), Edko (Beijing) Films (CN).
Script: Bao Jingjing. Novel: Bao Jingjing. Photography: Cao Dun. Editing: Liu Lei. Music: Lin Chaoyang, Ding Wei. Art direction: Yang Zhijia. Sound: Jean Umansky, André Rigaut, Shu Ye, Alexandre Widmer, Patrice Grisolet. Visual effects: Zhuang Yan.
Cast: Ni Ni (Cheng Yumeng/Cheng Tianshuang), Jing Boran (Wang Can), Liu Yase (Li Meilan/Hot-Blooded Li), Zhang Zixuan, Wang Rong (female friends in restuarant), Liu Zi (Lily, editor-in-chief), Hou Chuanguo (Wang Can’s father), Piskar Raj Pathak (KC, guide in Chitwan), Gesang (tour guide), Ma Junqin (Na), Chen Wei (Sun), Li Huijuan (Chen), Wei Junhua (Zhao), Zou Wan (editor-in-chief’s secretary), Yang Kaichun, Teng Xiaopeng, Zhu Xiaxing, Chen Xiaoping (other female friends at restaurant), Xu Yiqiao (Wang Can’s fiancee), Zhou Bo (father of Wang Can’s fiancee), Ju Xiang (Li Meilan’s boyfriend), Wang Yong (pick-up driver),Chen Qing (bus driver), Zhong Fuxiang (Buick driver), Kirk Martsen (western chef).
Release: China, 31 Dec 2013.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 26 Feb 2014.)