A Hustle Bustle New Year
没有过不去的年
China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 98 mins.
Director: Yin Li 尹力.
Rating: 8/10.
Tightly structured yarn of a dysfunctional family getting together at CNY is impressive on every level.
STORY
Beijing, Jan 2019. Since his father’s death, writer Wang Ziliang (Wu Gang) has had his mother, Song Baozhen (Wu Yanshu), living with him in the capital. Despite being 80, and having had a knee operation, she’s still very feisty. Three weeks before Lunar New Year, Wang Ziliang takes her to a hospital for a checkup for a cough. In the crush of people there he loses her; but she’s waiting for him when he returns to the flat. Wang Ziliang is about to leave for Los Angeles to visit his wife, Li Sijie (Jiang Shan), and two daughters, Wang Miaoguo (Ying Yuchen) and Wang Miaozhu (Ji Zihan), whom he sent to the US for schooling. He’s also being nagged for further revisions to the script of a period drama he wrote a year ago for his film-maker friend Xiao Fan (Lin Yongjian), as well as being entangled in exposing the scandal of a poisoned water supply in his family’s home village, Lingshan, near Huangshan, down south in Anhui province. In addition to all that, he’s also agreed to ghost-write the autobiography of a billionaire company chairman, simply for the money. Because of Wang Ziliang’s trip to California, Song Baozhen has decided to take the train to Hefei, capital of Anhui, to spend New Year with the rest of her family – her two daughters, academic/choral conductor Wang Xiangli (Liu Dan) and meat-processing plant worker Wang Xiangwei (Guo Hong), and hopefully her younger son, the estranged Wang Zijian (Guo Tao), who’s mixed up in the Lingshan affair. Meanwhile, Wang Ziliang, after trying to squirm out of the whole legal scandal and apologise, eventually finds a lawyer, Xiao Fan’s friend Chen Ping (Zou Junbai), to take on the public-interest litigation case for free. Meeting his young mistress, Meng Yao (Yan Junxi), one evening, he’s forced to pay out RMB15,000 to hush up a plastic-surgery scandal she’s been involved in. Song Baozhen takes the train south to Hefei on her own and Wang Ziliang arranges to arrive there later after visiting Shenzhen. One of his plays, Family Portrait, is being performed in Hefei, an he arranges tickets for his family. Also there, surprisingly, is Wang Zijian; the two brothers argue but Wang Ziliang begs him to visit their mother for the family’s New Year’s Eve dinner, which she wants to hold in her home village of Lingshan. Back in Beijing, before boarding the plane to Los Angeles, Wang Ziliang invites his mistress’ mother (Ding Jiali) and younger sister (Wang Jiangyi) to a splashy lunch, which does not go well. In the US, Wang Ziliang is initially welcomed by his family but then cracks appear between them; in China, lawyer Chen Ping is threatened by vested interests in the water-pollution scandal; and in Lingshan bad news colours the family’s New Year’s Eve dinner.
REVIEW
With his first film since the rather conventional biopic The Tree in the Rain 雨中的树 (2012), veteran film-maker Yin Li 尹力, 63, finally comes up trumps with A Hustle Bustle New Year 没有过不去的年, a strikingly constructed and beautifully written drama centred on a dysfunctional family’s attempts to all get together in their mother’s home village during CNY. Unlike so many films in the Spring Festival genre, Hustle is not so concerned with the practical difficulties of the reunion but more with the various family members finding some kind of truce and personal karma to make the event happen, with most of the action seen from the perspective of the elder brother, a writer whose life seems to be perpetually on the brink of imploding. The film made hardly any impression (RMB51 million) amid the New Year goliaths but is unquestionably the finest film of Yin’s career as well as a considerable movie in its own right.
Beijing-born Yin, 63, first attracted attention with the realist children’s film The September of Mine 我的九月 (1990) and female-centred rural yarn The Story of Xinghua 杏花三月天 (1993) – a popular genre at the time with overseas festivals – but these were followed by a string of okay but unchallenging everyday dramas. With The Knot 云水谣 (2006), an ambitious Greater China co-production with a rambling plot, and Iron Men 铁人 (2009), an oil-drilling saga spread across 30 years, he attempted more complex dramatic structures with multiple time-shifts – both with mixed results (especially The Knot) despite being written by the noted Liu Heng 刘恒 (Ju Dou 菊豆, 1990). In contrast, Hustle has a completely fresh feel, of a contemporary rather than old-style director, and a highly compressed structure that demands 100% attention.
It’s impossible to say whether the tight structure was a part of the original script or imposed at the editing stage; either way, it’s striking, with big ellipses in the plotting, things simply hinted at rather than conventionally laid out, and, especially in the first half, requiring considerable attention just to sort out all the relationships. It’s the first solo feature credit for Gong Yingtian 龚应恬, 57, a playwright, writer and occasional director who’s worked mostly on the small screen. Such compression could easily be branded as pretentious or annoying, but it does give the film a very special flavour and ultimately works in its favour. Hustle is one of very few recent Mainland movies that have a spiritual element above and beyond the events portrayed: one sequence, about two-thirds of the way in, cross-cuts between three different locations as the stars of fate seem to align between characters – a moment that’s superbly underscored by composer Zou Ye 邹野 and equals similar, semi-mystical moments in the equally impressive Gone with the Light 被光抓走的人 (2019) by writer-director Dong Runnian 董润年.
Wu Gang 吴刚, 58, a busy actor more often seen in supporting or villainous roles, is almost unrecognisable beneath long hair, specs and goatee beard as a successful but overworked Beijing writer who, when the film opens three weeks before CNY, is juggling script rewrites, a water-pollution cover-up he’s exposed in his home village, a lucrative contract to ghost-write a billionaire’s autobiography, the demands of his 80-year-old mother who’s moved in with him, a forthcoming trip to Los Angeles to see his wife and two daughters, and – blink and you’ll miss her – the attentions of his young mistress in Beijing. With scarcely-concealed paranoia – which comically erupts into uncontrollable OCD during a performance of one of his plays – Wu’s character also has to contend with a young brother (comedian Guo Tao 郭涛, good in a serious role) who hates him and is embroiled in the water cover-up, a bitter sister (Liu Dan 刘丹, What’s in the Darkness 黑处有什么, 2015) who resents his success, and a younger sister who’s too busy working round the clock to host their mother when she decides to travel south to Anhui province to spend CNY in her home village. On top of all that, more surprises await Wu’s character when he makes the lightning trip to see his wife and kids in California.
The way in which the dense script juggles all the characters without overpowering the audience is cleverly done at a writing level by Gong and at a directing one by Yin. Both are helped by a spot-on cast that also includes 82-year-old Wu Yanshu 吴彦姝 (the stubborn first wife in Love Education 相爱相亲, 2017) as the feisty granny trying to keep the family together, Jiang Shan 江珊 (so good as the mother in First Time 第一次, 2012) as the writer’s quietly tolerant wife, and Guo Hong 郭虹 as his younger sister. Gong’s script brims with moving little scenes (a rural oil-presser asking permission to call the granny his “mum”, the mistress’ mother offended by a splashy lunch, the writer and his elder daughter in the US, the wife’s farewell at the airport) inbetween those played lightly by Wu as the definition of a walking timebomb. Even the ending is not conventionally upbeat for a CNY film, with its bitter-sweet approach to Spring Festival traditions and the family. This is hardly a family one would like to share a dinner table with.
Zou’s fine symphonic score adds real atmosphere and emotion to events on screen, and widescreen photography by Zhao Xiaoshi 赵晓时 (Forever Enthralled 梅兰芳, 2008; Personal Tailor 私人订制, 2013; The Longest Shot 最长1枪, 2019) is always good to look at without detracting from the humans on screen. Unlike the film’s silly English title, the Chinese one simply means “There’s No Year You Can’t Get Through”.
CREDITS
Presented by Huaxia Film (Beijing) (CN), Huaxia Film Distribution (CN). Produced by Hebei Huadu Film & TV Production (CN), Huaxia Film Distribution (CN).
Script: Gong Yingtian. Photography: Zhao Xiaoshi. Editing: Liu Yao. Music: Zou Ye. End-title song music: Zhang Hongguang. Lyrics: Zhang Heping. Vocals: Zhu Hua. Art direction: Gao Yiguang. Styling: Bai Lijun. Sound: Jiao Chuanglei, Wang Danrong. Visual effects: Bao Xiaoxi, Liu Mingming (Beijing Dreamscape Star Culture Media). Executive direction: Huo Yu.
Cast: Wu Gang (Wang Ziliang), Wu Yanshu (Song Baozhen), Jiang Shan (Li Sijie, Wang Ziliang’s wife), Guo Tao (Wang Zijian, Wang Ziliang’s younger brother), Zou Junbai (Chen Ping, lawyer), Yan Junxi (Meng Yao, Wang Ziliang’s mistress), Wu Jun (Zhu Dake, Wang Xiangwei’s husband), Lin Yongjian (Xiao Fan, Wang Ziliang’s school friend/film-maker), Liu Dan (Wang Xiangli, Wang Ziliang’s elder sister), Guo Hong (Wang Xiangwei, Wang Ziliang’s younger sister), Ding Kai (Tong Yuanneng, oil-presser), Su Li (Caihua, Tong Yuanneng’s wife), Ying Yuchen (Wang Miaoguo, Wang Ziliang’s elder daughter), Ji Zihan (Wang Miaozhu, Wang Ziliang’s younger daughter), Ding Jiali (Meng Yao’s mother), Chen Yaxi (Xinxin, Wang Xiangli’s daughter), Li Junhao (Zhu Dashuai, Wang Xiangwei’s son), Wang Jiangyi (Meng Yao’s younger sister), Peng Dan (Yao Dan, actress), Ge Tian (Pang, chairman Zhang’s secretary), Liu Guohua (Liu, police captain), Liu Yifeng, Fan Lu (pas-de-deux performers), Zhang Yongshou, Tao Yuling.
Release: China, 15 Jan 2021.