After Typhoon

下一个台风

China, 2025, colour, 1.85:1, 96 mins.

Director: Li Yu 李玉.

Rating: 5/10.

A character drama centred on two young outsiders in a coastal village has a strong first half and good playing but falls apart structurally as things progress.

STORY

A fishing village on the coast of southern Fujian province, eastern China, the present day, summer. Just as the community is getting back to normal after being hit by a typhoon, a sullen, 21-year-old woman, Lin Momo (Zhang Zifeng), rents a room in the floating home of a family. The mother (Zhong Yuechun) gives her the room of her niece, Xi (Zhang Weili), who was taken in by the family when her parents died in a storm. Since then, the tomboy Xi has not spoken a word, silently working away in the local fishing industry. Lin Momo is a graduate art student who has come to the area to sketch; she says little and has a patch over her left eye, which she says was damaged in a fight. The mother suggests that Lin Momo sketches the Oyster Lady (Li Xinjie), a 44-year-old widow who lives in the village and poses for tourists with local outfits and artifacts. Xi takes her to the Oyster Lady’s home on her motorbike. While Lin Momo is there, her father (Li Xiaochuan) phones and begs her to come home. He says her university professor, Li Hequn (Cai Heng), whom she is suing, now wants to settle the case by paying off her family; Li Hequn has already given her father RMB100,000 but requires Lin Momo to sign a document before he gives her father the other half. Her father says he needed the money to pay for the university tuition of Lin Momo’s younger brother (Zhang Chenyu). Lin Momo hangs up on her father and breaks down in tears. Over the next few days Lin Momo gradually bonds with Xi, who is friendly towards her and shows her several photogenic places to sketch, including a small cove that is her secret hideaway with objects rescued from her late parents’ home. Together on a boat one day, Lin Momo sings “You and I are lonely ghosts.” When she jumps into the water, Xi jumps after her, even though she herself can’t swim. The two women bond further as Lin Momo teaches Xi to have the confidence to swim. As a new typhoon, Hongcan, is forecast to arrive, the fishing families move on land to the village to sit it out, though after dinner Lin Momo and Xi opt to spend that night on their floating home, where they bond some more. The professor’s wife, Chen Shu’nan (Yao Chen), who is also a university teacher, arrives in the village to give Lin Momo the remaining RMB100,000 and get her to sign the document dropping the case. Lin Momo had sued the professor for sexual misconduct at a graduation party; after losing the case, she’s now suing again. Chen Shu’nan says she believes it was consensual, as both parties were drunk; the payment of RMB200,000 is for Lin Momo to drop the case. Xi is present at their meeting and scolds Lin Momo for behaving that way; Xi herself stull feels wounded by village gossip that her own late mother slept around. When Lin Momo refuses to accept the money and drop the case, Chen Shu’nan tries to humiliate her in front of the whole village. When Xi defends her, chaos and fighting breaks out.

REVIEW

After her past two outings – the mirthless and overblown comedy Tiger Robbers 阳光劫匪 (2021) and gloomy, suspense-less drama The Fallen Bridge 断•桥 (2022) – Mainland writer-director Li Yu 李玉 makes a partial recovery with After Typhoon 下一个台风, a character drama centred on two young women in a coastal village that can be read as either a closeted lesbian affaire, a mutually supportive friendship between two outsiders or a more general story about female empowerment. It’s still nowhere in the class of her two best films (Lost in Beijing 苹果, 2007, and Buddha Mountain 观音山 苹果, 2010) and, like her college-to-adulthood ensembler Ever Since We Loved 万物生长 (2015), is most successful when trying the least. But before its structure starts falling apart in the second half, it does feature some strong individual playing by the four female leads and conveys a strong visual sense of the Fujian fishing community in which it’s set. None of that, however, helped it at the Mainland box office, where, despite the name cast, it took a paltry RMB4.8 million this autumn.

The film finds Shandong-born Li, 52, again working with her regular creative producer 监制 and co-writer Fang Li 方励, and again dealing with familiar territory. From her first feature (the explicitly lesbian drama Fish and Elephant 今年夏天, 2001), most of Li’s movies have been centred on women and their emotions, and in the past often starred her favourite actress, Fan Bingbing 范冰冰. Li’s problems have always been with dramatic structure and focus – both of which plague Typhoon after a promising start.

Things begin well with the film sketching daily activity restarting in a coastal village following a typhoon, and the work of a sullen, brawny tomboy, known only as Xi, as she goes about her work. Prior to features, Li made several documentaries and it shows here in her convincing portrait of a small fishing community off the coast of southern Fujian province (to judge by the dialect spoken), where Xi, who hasn’t spoken since her parents drowned in a storm when she was young, lives in the floating home of her aunt and uncle. Into this world arrives Lin Momo, 21, a university graduate who’s come to the area to sketch and who rents a room on the same floating home. She’s equally sullen but physically more fragile, and wears a patch over one eye damaged in a fight. The two outsiders soon bond and it becomes clear that Lin Momo is also running away from a troubled recent past.

The film’s first half, with the big butch Xi and the fragile but equally uncommunicative Lin Momo gradually bonding is the best part of the whole thing: “You and I are lonely ghosts 你和我都是孤独的鬼,” sings the latter as Xi rows them both around some deserted waters, before they both end up almost drowning and wait for the tide to go out while clutching a pole. Xi is haunted by her parents’ death and gossip that surrounded her mother; Lin Momo is haunted by a backstory that gradually emerges.

It’s from the 40-minute mark onwards, as the script tries to bring in that backstory and make it tie up with other characters that Typhoon starts to lose its way, moving from a simple love story/friendship between two young outsiders (as in the poster above) to one of female empowerment that also includes a local widow known as the Oyster Lady and a university professor’s wife who suddenly arrives in the village (see alternative poster, left). These two roles are played, respectively, by Malaysian Chinese actress Li Xinjie 李心洁 [Angelica Lee], a turn-of-the-century star who’s made only a couple of films in the past decade, and Mainland actress Yao Chen 姚晨, who has also, unfortunately, become an equally rare sight in recent years. Now in their late 40s, both give masterclasses in understated acting, especially Yao in her first five-minute scene; but their roles are clumsily integrated into the narrative and detract from the central love story/friendship. In dramatic terms, the film only makes it to the 90-something-minute mark by the skin of its teeth.

As the sullen little artist with an eyepatch and loads of attitude, the ever-busy Zhang Zifeng 张子枫, 24, couldn’t be better cast, and has made that type of role her own (Sister 我的姐姐, 2021; Girl on Edge 花漾少女杀人事件, 2025; The Shadow’s Edge 捕风追影, 2025). The big surprise is newcomer Zhang Weili 张伟丽, 35, a beefy MMA champion who’s silent for most of the movie but holds her own opposite Zhang Zifeng in an often touching way as the tomboy Xi. She’s also been the subject of a recent documentary, Unstoppable 永无止境 (2024), directed by Xu Huijing 许慧晶 (see poster, left).

The unforced but good-looking naturalism of the photography by Taiwan d.p. Yu Jingping 余静萍 is striking, and among her best work, while the light, simple chamber music by France’s Nicolas Errèra is also among his more effective scores. The film’s Chinese title literally means “The Next Typhoon”.

CREDITS

Presented by Zhewen Pictures Group (CN), Beijing Laurel Films (CN), Beijing Cornerstone Pictures (CN), Shanghai Maoyan Film (CN), Shanghai PMF Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Laurel Films (CN). Produced by Beijing Laurel Films (CN).

Script: Li Yu, Fang Li. Photography: Yu Jingping. Editing: Li Tianming. Music: Nicolas Errèra. Art direction: Liu Weixin. Styling: Wang Tao. Costumes: Lan Haiyang. Sound: Fu Kang. Action: Zhang Yihan, Lin Qiang. Special effects: Liu Yanzeng. Visual effects: Zhong Dehong, Xu Tonghui.

Cast: Zhang Zifeng (Lin Momo), Zhang Weili (Xi), Li Xinjie [Angelica Lee] (Qinghe sao/Oyster Lady), Yao Chen (Chen Shu’nan), Li Xiaochuan (Li Momo’s father), Cai Heng (Li Hequn, university professor), Zeng Mumei (Yueyue, Chen Shu’nan’s daughter), Zi Ye (Liu Rui), Jiang Yunlin (Xing), Zhong Linyu (Qing, Oyster Lady’s son), Zhong Yuechun (Xi’s aunt), Xu Shaowu (Xi’s uncle), Chen Zhusheng (Choutou shu/Uncle Shithead), Zhang Chenyu (Li Momo’s younger brother), Lv Fangjia (Liang, Xi’s cousin), Xiang Biying (Liang’s wife), Chen Shuzhen (Chen Awan, Xi’s mother), Yang Zixuan (young Xi).

Premiere: Beijing College Student Film Festival, 21 Apr 2025.

Release: China, 25 Oct 2025.