Another Day of Hope
又是充满希望的一天
China, 2023, colour, 1.66:1, 131 mins.
Director: Liu Taifeng 刘泰风.
Rating: 6/10.
Promising light drama about an ambitious middle manager whose life starts falling apart is let down by an over-long second half, despite good performances.
STORY
Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province, east China, the present day, summer. Wei Li (Song Ningfeng), 40, a manager at large delivery company Life Delivery 生活外卖, is diagnosed with kidney-stone pains at hospital and told to stop drinking so much coffee. Both he and his wife, Shen Junyi (Zhang Xinyi), who runs a dance studio, are ambitious to succeed but also tired and stressed out. At work, Wei Li is under pressure to improve the financial quarter’s figures, and at the same time he is angling for a promotion. He talks to Shen Junyi about getting a new flat and a new car, and having a second child. He suggests she gives up running her dance studio to spend more time with their teenage daughter Wei Meng (Liu Yiran), who is going through a difficult phase. She is about to go to senior high school, but Shen Junyi discovers she’s been lying about her latest exam results. To punish her, Shen Junyi confiscates her mobile phone and iPad, on which the introverted teenager spends too much time. As usual, it is Shen Junyi who enforces family discipline, while Wei Li does little. One day, while Wei Li is driving home, a food deliveryman, Chen Jinpeng (Bi Hanwen), jumps a red light at a junction and crashes into his car’s windscreen; Wei Li is only mildly concussed but the biker, who actually works for Life Delivery, is taken to hospital. Though the biker ignored a red light, mounted a pavement and was going in the wrong direction, the police find that Wei Li was “secondarily” responsible as there was no traffic around and he didn’t slow down at the junction. The biker is found to be “primarily” responsible, but Wei Li and Shen Junyi ask for an administrative review as they don’t think Wei Li should have any liability for the accident. They are told this will take 30 days and will hold up insurance payouts. The biker’s wife, Xu Xiaoxia (Guo Keyu), is approached at the hospital by a man, Feng Yuan (Sun Zhihong), who offers to be her lawyer, even though the biker had no insurance and Xu Xiaoxia cannot even afford to pay all his hospital bills. Feng Yuan arranges an informal meeting in the street for Xu Xiaoxia to persuade Wei Li and Shen Junyi to drop the review, as Xu Xiaoxia urgently needs some compensation money. Wei Li refuses to drop it, pointing out that the damage to his car has already cost him RMB20,000. Suddenly, to Wei Li’s surprise, Shen Junyi hands Xu Xiaoxia an envelope with RMB20,000 in cash, hoping that will keep her quiet. When Feng Yuan and Xu Xiaoxia say it doesn’t close the case, they start arguing in the street. To calm things down, Sun Junyi offers to visit Chen Jinpeng in hospital, where he’s in a coma. Then the next day at work Wei Li hears from his smooth superior, Sun (Lou Yajiang), that he and his whole team are to be made redundant for cost-cutting reasons.
REVIEW
An ambitious manager at an online food-delivery company finds his life gradually falling apart after a car accident in Another Day of Hope 又是充满希望的一天, a realistic and initially involving portrait of middle-class urban life and institutional game-playing that fails to fulfil its promise in the second half. Though way too long at over two hours, it’s still a notable calling-card for Nanjing-born writer-director Liu Taifeng 刘泰风, 40, here making his first feature after quite a few years of studies followed by some practical experience as an art director. After premiering at a European festival in late 2023, it got a local release in summer 2024 but took only a microscopic RMB213,000.
Liu graduated in stage design at the Communication University of Zhejiang in 2010, did further studies at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and then gained a master’s degree in photography at the American Film Institute. His first job in the Mainland industry was as art director on the 50-part TVD The Wife’s Lies 妻子的谎言 (2015), under the name Liu Di 刘迪; after that he left the industry for several years. As well as co-writing Another Day with Cai Zhiling 蔡知伶, a Bejing Film Academy graduate, he’s also co-written with her the crime drama 生死戒 (literally, “[The] Life or Death Ring”), whose screenplay was okayed by China Film Administration in autumn 2022 but which does not appear to have gone into production so far.
Another Day sets out a sizeable stall during its first half-hour, as it looks at a typically ambitious, middle-class big-city family. The husband, Wei Li, is a manager at a large food-delivery service and the wife, Shen Junyi, runs a dance studio; both are tired and stressed out, and he’s under presure at work to improve the quarter’s figures. But he still wants a new flat, a new car and a second child, especially if he gets a promotion he’s been angling for. On top of all that, their daughter, an introverted, internet-obsessed teen who’s about to go to senior high, has been lying about her school results. So far, so normal for an ambitious middle-class family in metropolitan China; but then everything changes one day when, driving home, Wei Li has his windscreen shattered by a food deliveryman flying off his motorbike.
Though the biker was clearly at fault in every way, Wei Li is held “secondarily” responsible by the police on a pure technicality. More importantly, the whole insurance bureaucracy, plus an ambulance-chasing lawyer hired by the biker’s wife, descends on Wei Li and his wife. Wei Li then hears he’s to lose his own job. An hour into the film there are already multiple ways the film could develop: from the couple’s own shakey marriage, with a problem teen daughter, through all the legal game-playing that ensues between Wei Li and the victim’s wife, to Wei Li’s new problem of finding another job at the age of 40. (The last was also tackled in the black comedy Upstream 逆行人生, 2024, which had a big star attached, was also set in the world of food deliverers, and was released only a week before Another Day.)
In the event, the script focuses largely on Wei Li’s attempts to find a new job at an age that’s now considered almost unre-employable in the Mainland. This leads him to befriend an old university roommate who’s now little more than a high-living, boozy gangster. This plot diversion, which is essentially a dead end despite all its soul-searching, weakens the film’s architecture, despite (and also because of) a colourful performance by Shanghai-born TV actor Jin Jia 金珈, 44. More to the point, the script also pursues the plot’s legal ramifications, in which China’s new gig economy comes in for criticism, especially in the cut-throat business of food deliverers. The final half-hour, which also has some over-convenient plot twists, feels slack, with too many scenes going on for too long.
The film could easily be improved by losing at least 20 minutes, starting with most of the old-roommate sub-plot, and generally tightening its focus rather than trying to cover too many bases. There’s a lot of good material here, starting with the real-time single take of the biker thudding into Wei Li’s windscreen (a real coup de cinéma) and later with an impressive, six-minute scene of the couple arguing on a busy street with the victim’s wife and her lawyer. “The world is changing very rapidly and I’m having trouble keeping up” realises the once-ambitious Wei Li – and that really is the film’s underlying theme beneath all its surface complications. Like many Mainland movies nowadays, Another Day has a palpable nostalgia for simpler times.
Liu deliberately made the film on 16mm for the sake of realism, and the whole picture does have that feel without rubbing the audience’s nose in it (thanks to well-composed visuals by Yan Daiyao 颜代尧, second-unit d.p. on Flaming Cloud 三贵情史, 2023). But it equally comes from the screenplay and performances, with Beijing-born actor Song Ningfeng 宋宁峰, 43, and Sichuan-born actress Zhang Xinyi 张歆艺, also 43 – both experienced players – entirely believable as the central couple. As the lawyer who keeps his opportunistic side well disguised, Sun Zhihong 孙之鸿 is especially good in what could have been a cliched role; so, too, is Guo Keyu 郭柯宇 as the victim’s wife (clearly a social rung or two below the leads) whose intentions are often unclear.
CREDITS
Presented by Bright East (Beijing) Films (CN), Poly Film Investment (CN), Heaven Pictures (Beijing) The Movie (CN), Beijing Joy Spreader Huayue Culture Technology (CN), Superb Orange Media (Beijing) Cultural Group (CN), Immortal Pictures (Qingdao) (CN). Produced by Immortal Pictures (Qingdao) (CN).
Script: Cai Zhiling, Liu Taifeng. Photography: Yan Daiyao. Editing: Yue Bowei. Music: He Meizhen. Art direction: Song Weijun. Costumes: Han Muchen. Styling: Guan Mulin. Sound: Gao Feifei, Fan Wenrui, Li Xiaodan. Action: Gou Ge. Car stunts: Ma Yulu. Executive direction: Shen Lili, Sun Hang.
Cast: Song Ningfeng (Wei Li), Zhang Xinyi (Shen Junyi), Guo Keyu (Xu Xiaoxia, Chen Jinpeng’s wife), Sun Zhihong (Feng Yuan, lawyer for Xu Xiaoxia), Jin Jia (Jiang Quan), Tan Quan (Wen Bin, Wei Li’s office deputy), Liu Yiran (Wei Meng, Wei Li’s teenage daughter), Liu Yitie (younger policeman), Yang Guang (old man), Lou Yajiang (Sun, Wei Li’s superior), Shi Chunzi (Li, dance-studio teacher), Zhao Xiaodong (Xu Jie), Ye Xinyu (older policeman), Huang Ting (taxi driver), Zhong Weiping (Zhang, A&E doctor), Yu Huimin (Han, doctor), Bi Hanwen (Chen Jinpeng, deliveryman).
Premiere: Camerimage Film Festival (Directors’ Debuts Competition), Toruń, Poland, 16 Nov 2023.
Release: China, 16 Aug 2024.