A Deux World

旗

China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 98 mins.

Director: Liang Ming 梁明.

Rating: 7/10.

Delicately observed tale of a rural teacher and his sole pupil, an autistic boy.

STORY

Muer village, southern China, the present day. Teacher 等开花. The local elementary school, run by teacher Deng Kaihua (Liu Weihua), is under pressure to close as the building is crumbling and there are only two pupils left. When those two leave to join a newly merged school in the city, Deng Kaihua is left with no students – until his wife (Ailiya) reminds him that the village still has one kid, six-year-old Deng Duanduan (Zhang Ruiyu), son of young single mother Deng Xiaoqin (Huo Nifang) who was abandoned by her lover Li Muzi when she became pregnant. But Deng Duanduan is autistic, and also hardly talks. However, Deng Kaihua’s wife manages to persuade Deng Xiaoqin to send him to the village school and not to the merged school. Student 端端. On the first day, Deng Xiaoqin accompanies Deng Duanduan to the school and attends the national flag-raising ceremony in the courtyard. Deng Duanduan immediately becomes transfixed by the flag, staring at it all day long in silence. Deng Kaihua tries to break though to him and even moves the classroom into the courtyard; but he still can’t get Deng Duanduan to pay attention to his lessons. He then has the idea of teaching him the Chinese character for “flag” and building words around it. This finally starts to unlock Deng Duanduan’s mind, though only temporarily. Exorcise 傩. Deng Kaihua and his wife unsuccessfully try to perform a traditional local ritual, the nuóxì 傩戏, to “exorcise” Deng Duanduan’s mind. But then the authorities finally close the school and Deng Duanduan goes off to the city to study. Yellow and White 黄与白. Following a personal tragedy, Deng Kaihua is cared for by Deng Xiaoqin, and the two find mutual strength from each other.

REVIEW

A didactic but delicately observed tale of a rural elementary school teacher and an autistic boy who’s his sole pupil, A Deux World 旗 draws a whole world of the imagination without falling into the usual cliches of disease-of-the-week movies. Based on the 2009 novella by Wang Hua 王华, a Guizhou-based writer from the Gelao ethnic minority who once taught in a rural elementary school, the film transfers the story to an unspecified, conventionally pretty setting (filmed in rural Guangdong province) but otherwise is a remarkably successful attempt by 50-something director Liang Ming 梁明 at translating a novella to feature-film format without making the content feel over-stretched.

With a main cast of only four characters – the teacher and his wife, the boy and his single mother – the screenplay by Li Li 李力, who wrote Liang’s The Ring of Rainbow Flower 夏天，有风吹过 (2008) and Fairy Tales 都市童话 (2010), both centred on young people and their relationship to the adult world, encompasses a rich variety of characters in which the boy and his autism are catalysts to the adults sorting out ther own problems rather than being the main centre of attention. Left with no students after schooling is transferred to the city, the ageing teacher offers to take on the autistic, six-year-old Deng Duanduan in order to keep his village school from closing.

With the support of his wife, and Deng Duanduan’s young mother – who was abandoned, pregnant, by her boyfriend – the teacher tries to find the key to unlocking the kid’s mind. That key turns out to be the national flag in the school’s courtyard that Deng Duanduan becomes hypnotised by, to the exclusion of anything else. By tricking the boy’s mind, the teacher manages to make some progress – for the time being. Any number of meanings can be read into the allegorical story, and at the end of the day the flag motif is a MacGuffin rather than a nationalistic symbol. The movie is basically about the small lies one tells oneself and others to get by in life: as the story’s fourth section, titled Yellow and White 黄与白, movingly underlines, both the teacher and the mother emerge the wiser from the process, if at great personal loss.

Li’s script cuts out all non-essentials and concentrates on the emotional heart of the story, beautifully evoked by the gentle score of Liu Sijun 刘思军 and gliding visuals of cameraman Liu Haijian 刘海舰, who shot Fairy Tales. Liang started his career as a cameraman, bringing a versatile look to films like The Story of Lotus 荷香 (2003), Duet 两个人的芭蕾 (2005) and crime drama Gun of Mercy 五颗子弹 (2007) – all set in the countryside – and, with little conventional plot, the film has a fluid visual style that’s as much a part of the film as anything else. The shooting location (Guangdong’s Lingnan region) lacks Guizhou’s more characterful, harder look but is otherwise fine.

As the stubborn teacher whose own motives are open to question, TV actor Liu Weihua 刘卫华 underplays what could have been a grandstanding role, and he’s warmly partnered by Inner Mongolia-born Ailiya 艾丽娅 (Ermo 二嫫, 1994; Duet) as his equally obsessive wife. But it’s actress Huo Nifang 霍泥芳, 28, a regular in Liang’s films, who quietly steals the show as the young mother whose life was once wrecked but who now finds a potential new beginning.

The film’s Chinese title means “Flag”.

CREDITS

Presented by Guangdong Television (CN), Hebei Institute of Media (CN), Guangdong Southern Star Film & TV (CN), Beijing Xiaobaihua Performing Art Centre (CN), Beijing Shengshi Liangren Culture Media (CN). Produced by Beijing Shengshi Liangren Culture Media (CN).

Script: Li Li. Novella: Wang Hua. Photography: Liu Haijian. Editing: Zhang Yan. Music: Liu Sijun. Art direction: Feng Zhiyuan. Costume design: Li Man. Sound: Wang Changrui, Wang Xuliang. Executive director: Yong Yulin.

Cast: Liu Weihua (Deng Kaihua), Huo Nifang (Deng Xiaoqin), Ailiya (Deng Kaihua’s wife), Zhang Ruiyu (Deng Duanduan, Deng Xiaoqin’s son), Sun Deyuan (Wang Shitou, education office director), Chen Chong (teacher), Liang Ming (primary school principal), Ma Haijun (Zhang Qing, the shopkeeper), Tong Weixiao, Wang Fei, Yong Yulin, He Jia, Gao Ge, Li Man, Cao Jianli.

Premiere: Chaoyang Cultural Centre, Beijing, 22 Jan 2105.

Release: China, 14 Sep 2015.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 1 Jul 2015.)