Old Beast

老兽

China, 2017, colour, 16:9, 111 mins.

Director: Zhou Ziyang 周子阳.

Rating: 4/10.

Naturalistic portrait on an old rogue laid low by an economic downturn is too extended for its content.

STORY

Ordos region, Inner Mongolia province, northern China, the present day, winter. Sixtysomething Yang Haichuan (Tumen) is a once-successful businessman who’s now broke and spends his time gambling in the economically depressed town where he lives. One day, after leaving a majiang den, he bumps into an old herdsman friend, Lubusen (Alatengwula), who’s also down on his luck and has brought a sick camel into town to be treated. The two end up drinking and dining and then sleeping it off till next day in a bathhouse. In the meantime, Li Guixiang (Hao Qiaoling), Yang Haichuan’s wife, has fallen down at home and ended up in hospital with subcutaneous bleeding. The doctor (Liu Guohua) tells Yang Haichuan’s son, Yang Bing (Wang Chaobei), and elder daughter, Yang Mei (Wang Mingshuo) – who are at the hospital with their spouses, Wang Lixia (Yi Danna) and Liang Guodong (Su Feng) – that their mother needs urgent surgery that will cost around RMB30,000. None of them has enough money and they can’t reach their father because his mobile phone is dead. After strolling around with Yang Haichuan, Lubusen goes home and leaves the young camel with his friend for a couple of days. Yang Haichuan immediately sells the camel to a butcher and buys presents for his mistress Lili (Wang Zizi), whom he visits and tries to make love to. Lili is not a local, and later she tells Yang Haichuan that her sister is asking her to come back for a while to help out with an online sales business. Yang Haichuan leaves. Meanwhile, his younger daughter, Yang Xiaoqin (Sun Jiaqin), sends over the money to Yang Mei; Wang Lixia, who’s always nagging her husband about his father, also grudgingly contributes RMB10,000, not knowing about the money from Yang Xiaoqin. When Yang Mei goes to pay the operation fee, she finds the hospital’s office is closed until the next morning. Upstairs she finds her father, who’s charged his mobile and heard the news. After telling him to go outside for a smoke, she secretly leaves the cash under her mother’s pillow, telling her to pay it next morning. Unknown to Yang Mei, Yang Haichuan sees her doing this. He purchases a cow to give to Lubusen to help him out and apologise for selling the young camel. But when his family learn that he stole RMB10,000 from the cash under the pillow, they demand a meeting with their father and force him to sign a pledge to finally give up gambling and do his duty by his wife. The argument ends with them tying him up and locking him in a basement. Yang Haichuan escapes but then sues his son and Liang Guodong for abuse and assault, which sets off a whole string of complications.

REVIEW

A naturalistic, almost documentary-style portrait of an old rogue whose double-dealing finally catches up with him, Old Beast 老兽 could profitably lose at least 20 minutes with much of the slack and repetition edited out. Sustained by a sly performance from Inner Mongolian veteran Tumen 涂们 (Heavenly Grassland 天上草原, 2002; Genghis Khan in An End to Killing 止杀, 2012), who manages to make a basically unsympathetic character at least watchable, the film works best as a broader portrait of a society desperately hanging on during an economic depression and the behaviour some people are driven to in the name of money. Despite plaudits on the festival circuit, it made a tiny RMB2 million on commercial release.

Writer-director Zhou Ziyang 周子阳, in his mid-30s at the time, sets the story in his home region of Ordos, western Inner Mongolia – memorably portrayed in To Live and Die in Ordos 警察日记 (aka Police Diary, 2013, dir. Ning Ying 宁瀛) – whose cold, wintry light and grey colours are exactly caught by the handheld photography of Belgium’s Matthias Delvaux, in his first feature. Zhou has stated that Old Beast‘s title refers not to the main character but to the economic background that grinds down people’s lives, though, despite scenes that show a softer, more caring side to the protagonist, it fits him pretty closely as a description.

Inspired by an event in his own family, in which his cousins held their father hostage, the plot centres on a few days in the life of Yang Haichuan, a once-successful businessman who’s now broke, spends his days gambling, and ends up stealing some family money meant for an operation on his sickly wife. Betweentimes he also sells a camel put into his charge by a herdsman friend that he uses to buy presents for his younger mistress – who then announces she’s moving back home for a while. In circumstances that would fell a lesser man, Yang Haichuan maintains a vague dignity of sorts in the performance by Tumen, 57 at the time, and even helps out his old herdsman pal who’s equally bereft of a living. But his wounded pride leads to circumstances that split him and his children even more.

Casting is strong down the line, with notable naturalistic playing by Wang Chaobei 王超北 and Yi Danna 伊丹纳 as Yang Haichuan’s son and angry daughter-in-law, Sun Jiaqin 孙加琴 as his younger daughter who tries to help out, the more experienced Wang Zizi 王子子 (the gangster’s moll in black comedy Heart for Heaven 一念天堂, 2015) as the pragmatic mistress, and Inner Mongolian singer Alatengwula 阿拉腾乌拉 as the herdsman friend. The problem is that the story is perilously thin, scenes are played out beyond their worth, and the second half has a more and more distended feel with nothing new brought to the table. The black final sequence – cool and calculated – seems to show that Yang Haichuan hasn’t changed a whit.

Dialogue is mostly in the heavy local dialect/accent. Zhou has since shot the so far unreleased drama Wu Hai 乌海, starring actor Huang Xuan 黄轩 and actress Yang Zishan 杨子珊, along with Tumen and Wang, also with Delvaux as d.p. [After premiering at the San Sebastian festival in Sep 2020, Wu Hai was released in the Mainland in Oct 2021.]

CREDITS

Presented by Dongchun Films (Shanghai) (CN), Fangjin Visual Media Culture Communication (Beijing) (CN), Having Me Films (Beijing) (CN), Beijing Daqiao Tang Film & TV Media (CN), Glowing Peak Entertainment (Beijing) (CN), Beijing Scenefone Film Equipment Rental (CN). Produced by Beijing Dongchun Films (CN), WXS Productions (CN).

Script: Zhou Ziyang. Photography: Matthias Delvaux. Editing: Liu Xinzhu. Music: Song Yuzhe. Art direction: He Shuang. Costumes: Lv Jianping. Sound: Bai Xiaofeng.

Cast: Tumen (Yang Haichuan), Wang Chaobei (Yang Bing, son), Yi Danna (Wang Lixia, Yang Bing’s wife), Wang Mingshuo (Yang Mei, elder daughter), Su Feng (Liang Guodong, Yang Mei’s husband), Alatengwula (Lubusen, herdsman), Wang Zizi (Lili, Yang Haichuan’s mistress), Sun Jiaqin (Yang Xiaoqin, younger daughter), Huang Wei (Xu Feng, Yang Xiaoqin’s husband), Hao Qiaoling (Li Guixiang, Yang Haichuan’s wife), Liang Feng (lawyer), Yan Liyang (Dandan, grandson), Huang Jingyi (Yang Xiaoqin’s child), Liu Guohua (Wang, hospital doctor), Wan Shaohui (Liang Guodong’s boss), Yuan Lei (court enforcement officer), Wang Xiaojun (judge), Wang Yujie (bath-house manager), Yang Long (majiang player).

Premiere: First Film Festival (Debut Spotlight), Xining, China, 24 Jul 2017.

Release: China, 11 Dec 2017.