Dog Days
三伏天
Hong Kong/China, 2016, colour, 16:9, 96 mins.
Director: Jordan Schiele 熙氻.
Rating: 4/10.
Authentically staged but dramatically meh indie centred on a dancer searching for her abducted baby.
STORY
A suburb of Changsha, Hunan province, China, the present day, summer. Lulu (Huang Lu), a dancer at a seedy bar/restaurant, comes home one evening to find her husband, Bai Long (Tian Muchen), has left with their baby son. A tip-off leads her to the Night Cat Bar and a transvestite dancer, Sunny (Luo Lanshan), who has had a homosexual affaire with Bai Long. Lulu tells Sunny that, if he leads her to Bai Long and she gets her son back, she’ll leave the two of them alone. The next day they take the overnight train to Shanghai. During the journey Lulu, who is still lactating, tries to breastfeed another women’s baby without her permission. In Shanghai, Bai Long seems not to be in the hotel Sunny leads her to, but she takes a room anyway. When Bai Long finally appears, he tells her he’s sold their baby to a Shanghai doctor.
REVIEW
A seedy nightclub dancer searches for the baby abducted by her husband in Dog Days 三伏天, an authentically staged but dramatically meh indie by New York-born, Beijing-based film-maker Jordan Schiele 熙氻. Produced (surprisingly) by Hong Kong’s Peng Haoxiang 彭浩翔 [Pang Ho-cheung] via his company Making Film Productions 正在电影制作, it’s otherwise utterly Mainland in both feel and content. Schiele, who studied Chinese at university and first went there at the age of 19, has a perspective that’s indistinguishable from a local-born indie film-maker’s, and joins a small but growing list of westerners (including France’s Fabien Gaillard 高飞, Lao Wai 老外, 2010) making Chinese movies with a local feel. However, Schiele’s evident sympathy for the country doesn’t translate into sympathetic characters on screen, making Dog Days a curiously uninvolving experience.
The film’s English title (which translates the Chinese one) refers to the hottest days of summer when people traditionally do evil things – in this case, a nightclub dancer’s sleazebag husband makes off with their baby son and tries to sell it in Shanghai. With a first half set in a grungy, sweaty suburb of Changsha, Hunan province, central China, and a second half in the giant metropolis of Shanghai 1,000 kilometres away, the film certainly has an authentic feel both for two extremes of urban existence in modern China and also for the way in which extremes of weather can influence behaviour. On a human level, however, Schiele’s script muddies the waters with an undeveloped gay slant that simply gets in the way of what should be the main drama – a couple’s feud over their baby son.
While searching for her baby, the dancer discovers her husband has been errant in more ways than one: he’s been having an affaire with a transvestite dancer who has fallen hard for him. The dancer does a deal with the transvestite: take me to my husband, let me get my baby son back, and I’ll leave you two alone. En route, the two dancers build a practical, platonic relationship, which then starts to fracture when they reach Shanghai and the husband is brought into play. Schiele seems to want to explore three kinds of love – heterosexual, homosexual and maternal – via a story of baby-snatching that is a common occurrence in modern China (and has already been the subject of two high-profile recent movies, Dearest 亲爱的, 2014, and Lost and Love 失孤, 2015). However, the heterosexual hardly gets a look-in, the homosexual is barely convincing (despite a sad performance by Luo Lanshan 罗蓝山 as the tranny dancer, and a flashback to how the two men met), and only the maternal – which proves the strongest bond of all – finally comes through in some briefly touching scenes at the end.
The problem is that the viewer never feels fully engaged with the characters, partly because the script provides little emotional motivation for their actions, partly because Schiele doesn’t seem sure what kind of film he wants to make, and partly because of his inexperience in creating a feature-length dramatic arc. In the main role, indie icon Huang Lu 黄璐, 32, who’s proved she can animate a wide range of roles (Blind Mountain 盲山, 2007; The Red Awn 红色康拜因, 2007; Unpolitical Romance 水饺几雨, 2012, on which Schiele was d.p.; Blind Massage 推拿, 2014) even in uninteresting films (She, a Chinese 中国姑娘, 2009; Here There 这里 那里, 2011), is grim and determined throughout, rarely letting the viewer inside her character.
The actress’ most affecting scenes are near the end when she comes face to face with the wife who’s adopted her baby – though here she’s overshadowed by photographer Xing Danwen 邢丹文 as the poised older woman – and in a brief scene where she apologises to a hotel receptionist for her rudeness. Unfortunately, the latter, which feels utterly authentic in its portrayal of modern Mainland manners, is thrown away by Schiele in a long shot. As the dancer’s errant husband, Tian Muchen 田牧宸 (The White Lie 火云端, 2015) is given few chances to build a sympathetic character and simply looks embarrassed in a gay-romp sequence with the girly Luo in a hotel room (the only overtly gay material in the whole movie).
Editing by China’s experienced Kong Jinlei 孔劲蕾 keeps things moving in a natural, un-arty way, and photography by Nathanael Carton, who shot Schiele’s Shanghai-set short Ten Years from Now 十年后 (2011), also with actress Huang, captures the essence of the two main settings with an unforced realism. The funky-chordal electronic score by Patrick Jonsson (Bends 过界, 2013) is atmospheric rather than emotionally descriptive. Despite its content, the film has, according to Schiele, been passed for exhibition in China.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Nextra Film Culture (CN), Making Film Culture & Media (Beijing) (CN), Making Film Productions (HK). Produced by Making Film Productions (HK).
Script: Jordan Schiele. Photography: Nathanael Carton. Editing: Kong Jinlei. Music: Patrick Jonsson. Art direction: Ying Haitao. Costumes: Lin Liying. Sound: Zhen Hongmin, Du Duzhi.
Cast: Huang Lu (Lulu), Luo Lanshan (Sunny), Tian Muchen (Bai Long), Liu Hui (restaurant owner), Zhou Lan (fat guy), Lv Zexian (Zhou, doctor), Xing Danwen (Mrs. Zhou), Xia Qi (hotel receptionist).
Premiere: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama Special), 13 Feb 2016.
Release: China, 30 Mar 2018.