The Great Hypnotist
催眠大师
China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 101 mins.
Director: Chen Zhengdao 陈正道 [Leste Chen].
Rating: 6/10.
Kammerspiel-like psychodrama between a doctor and patient doesn’t realise its potential.
STORY
Feng City, northern China, the present day. Celebrated hypnotherapist Xu Ruining (Xu Zheng), who lectures at an institution run by Professor Fang (Lv Zhong), takes on a case referred to him by Shen Li (Guan Le), a psychologist whom Xu Ruining knows and who says she found the case quite scary. The patient is Ren Xiaoyan (Mo Wenwei), who claims to have been abandoned both by her parents and by her foster parents, and now sees ghosts. Xu Ruining says he doesn’t believe in ghosts and offers to put her under hypnotherapy. He tells her to “open the door” in her dream, as the secret she is looking for will lie behind it. Instead, he finds himself sucked into her dream, in which she pushes him into a lake. When he wakes up, Ren Xiaoyan has erased the tape of their session. After proving to her that she was an orphan with no birth certificate, and was adopted at an orphanage by Mr. and Mrs. Ren (Song Yanzhou, E Bo), Xu Ruining ends the session. Ren Xiaoyan then finds herself in another dream, involving orphanage head Lin (Li Meichun), her boyfriend Luo Yusong (Wang Yaoqing), and Luo Yusong’s death eight years ago in a car crash. However, the dream is all part of her original hypnotherapy session, from which Xu Ruining now wakes her up. Ren Xiaoyan then tells him there are two ghosts in the room who are telling her personal details about him, such as his fear of water. Xu Ruining finds the tables turned in the doctor-patient relationship, and goes on the defensive, pursued by his own nightmares.
REVIEW
It would be nice to report that Chen Zhengdao 陈正道 [Leste Chen] (Love on Credit 幸福额度, 2011) – the only Taiwan director of his generation to seriously pursue a career in mainland China – has rediscovered his creative mojo after the misfire of rom-com Say Yes! 101次求婚 (2013). Such, however, is not the case: The Great Hypnotist 催眠大师 doesn’t just sit there and mark time as Say Yes! did for long stretches, but it rarely fulfils its promise of a gripping game of psychological cat-and-mouse promised by the opening. As with his previous film, Chen delivers a technically professional package; but he’s again working from a script (developed with Ren Peng 任鹏, who adapted Say Yes!) that doesn’t measure up to its ambitions and is let down by a major piece of mis-casting.
The high-concept idea of a patient and a celebrated hypnotherapist going head-to-head in a session in which they chase each other’s fears and dreams is a strong one – and with that in mind, Chen has personally retained re-make and sequel rights. It’s not entirely original – the most recent example in just Chinese cinema of a psychiatrist-patient battle was the pulpy Virtual Recall 异空危情 (2010), with Tang Yifei 唐一菲 and Ying Cai’er 应采儿 [Cherrie Ying] – but Hypnotist takes the idea almost to the level of a Kammerspiel, with much of the movie set in the doctor’s office and played out between just the two leads. That, however, throws a big responsibility on dialogue and casting to hold the attention and maintain suspense throughout the story’s twists and turns. Though they do have their moments, the dialogue (as in Say Yes!) just isn’t that gripping and the casting is flawed by having popular Mainland comic Xu Zheng (Lost in Thailand 人再囧途之泰囧, 2012) as the hypnotherapist.
Xu, also one of the film’s producers, has played straight roles before (Unfinished Girl 第三个人, 2007; No Man’s Land 无人区, 2013) but his performance here of an egocentric, star psychologist is so wink-wink (at least in the early stages) that the viewer keeps expecting him to drop out of character and crack a joke. It’s a distraction that a Kammerspiel like this simply doesn’t need. As his patient who proves a difficult nut to crack, Hong Kong’s Mo Wenwei 莫文蔚 [Karen Mok] is suitably strong (and performs creditably in her own Mandarin) but can’t establish the necessary intimacy with Xu’s doctor. Other roles are insignificant.
The film starts playing with the audience from the start, with an opening that’s revealed to be a fantasy; and the onion-like script, with its dreams within dreams, sustains a tone in which the audience is never sure what it’s actually seeing. As the tables are turned at the 70-minute mark, and the doctor is thrown on the defensive, the movie does finally establish some real psychological drama rather than being just a collection of fantasy elements and twists, and a subsequent replay of events after the Big Twist is clever. Chen, however, again loosens his grip with a wholly redundant scene of Mo’s character singing a song in a bar one night.
Production values are good, with an atmospheric main set of the doctor’s wood-panelled office (all matt colours) by Chen’s regular Taiwan art director Luo Shunfu 罗順福 and moody widescreen photography by Hong Kong’s Lin Zhijian 林志坚 [Charlie Lam] (Echoes of the Rainbow 岁月神偷, 2009, several films for Peng Haoxiang 彭浩翔 [Pang Ho-cheung], plus Chen’s Eternal Summer 盛夏光年, 2006). Editing by Mainland ace Yang Hongyu 杨红雨 is tight. The northern China city in which the film is set is fictional, doubled by Tianjin.
CREDITS
Presented by Wanda Media (CN). Produced by Wanda Media (CN), Beijing Golden Cicada Film (CN).
Script: Ren Peng, Leste Chen. Photography: Lin Zhijian [Charlie Lam]. Editing: Yang Hongyu. Music: Yu Jingyan. Music supervision: Chen Junting. Art direction: Luo Shunfu. Costume design: Ye Zhuzhen. Sound: Zhao Nan, Yang Jiang. Action: Luo Lixian [Bruce Law], Luo Yimin [Norman Law]. Car stunts: Luo Lixian [Bruce Law]. Visual effects: Xu Jian, Wei Ming.
Cast: Xu Zheng (Xu Ruining, doctor), Mo Wenwei [Karen Mok] (Ren Xiaoyan), Hu Jing (Chen Ting), Lv Zhong (Fang, professor), Wang Yaoqing (Luo Yusong, Ren Xiaoyan’s late boyfriend), Guan Le (Shen Li), Yang Kaidi (Amy, Xu Ruining’s secretary), Li Fangcong (young Ren Xiaoyan), Jiang Jia Yutong (baby Ren Xiaoyan), Dai Ming (Xu Ruining’s father), Song Ci (Xu Ruining’s mother), Jiang Ditong (Ruirui), Jin Shunzi (Ruirui’s mother, middle-aged), Yin Hang (Ruirui’s mother, young), E Bo (foster mother), Song Yanzhou (foster father), Sun Na (He Qin), Deng Wei (Ren Jianguo), Li Meichun (Lin, orphanage director), Zhan He (driver), Liu Lu (female student), Fan Shuzhen (Mrs. Li), Zhao Leyi (girl in car crash).
Premiere: Beijing Film Festival (Closing Film), 24 Apr 2014.
Release: China, 29 Apr 2014.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 17 Jul 2014.)