Love after Love

第一炉香

China, 2020, colour/b&w, 1.85:1, 142 mins.

Director: Xu Anhua 许鞍华 [Ann Hui].

Rating: 5/10.

Story of a Shanghai teenager in Hong Kong’s pre-WW2 socialite set is a tale of high passion with no passion at all.

STORY

Hong Kong, 1938, summer. Two years ago, amid talk of war, Ge Xiaolong (Ma Sichun) was sent from Shanghai to high school in Hong Kong; next year she should graduate and get into university. However, her father, Ge Yukun, can no longer afford to support her, so, eager to stay on to finish her schooling, Ge Xiaolong asks the help of her paternal aunt, Mrs. Liang (Yu Feihong), who lives in the British colony. Ge Xiaolong is aware that there’s no love lost between her strict, conservative father and his freewheeling younger sister, who “brought shame” on the Ge family when she moved to Hong Kong and became a concubine of the wealthy businessman Liang, who has since died. Now a young widow, Mrs. Liang lives a hedonistic life in a large mansion; her wealthy, well-connected social circle includes “Sir” Qiao Cheng (Qin Pei) and his two mixed-race children, George (Peng Yuyan) and Kitty (Liang Luoshi), as well as “Uncle” Situ (Fan Wei). Sensing an opportunity, Mrs. Liang gives the humble Ge Xiaolong a room; however, on the first evening she doesn’t allow her to attend a dinner party she’s holding downstairs. Soon afterwards, Mrs. Liang gets rid of an uppity maid, Didi (Zhang Jianing), who’s been flirting with playboy George Qiao. Two months later Mrs. Liang holds a garden party for the choir that Ge Xiaolong sings in; and while Mrs. Liang comes on to one of its members, third-year medical student Lu Zhaolin (Yi Fang) who is a friend of Ge Xiaolong, George Qiao comes on to Ge Xiaolong. Kitty Qiao warns Ge Xiaolong not to get involved with her brother, who is very unreliable. Later, while Mrs. Liang is seducing Lu Zhaolin, George Quao tries to seduce Ge Xiaolong but fails. At a dinner, Uncle Situ gives identical bracelets to Mrs. Liang and Ge Xiaolong as a sign of affection. George Qiao echoes his sister’s advice to Ge Xiaolong, saying he doesn’t intend to marry anyone and not to waste her time on him; he adds, however, that he can still make her happy. The pair later make love in her room, but afterwards he simply leaves. At dawn she sees him leaving the room of Ni’er (Zhang Junning), a maid with whom she’d built up a good relationship. She decides to leave Hong Kong immediately but is delayed by a typhoon; a subsequent attempt to return to Shanghai also fails. And then she asks the help of Mrs. Liang in persuading Qiao Cheng to make his son (whom he despises as a useless playboy) marry her.

REVIEW

Following Love in a Fallen City 倾城之恋 (1984) and Eighteen Springs 半生缘 (1997), veteran Hong Kong director Xu Anhua 许鞍华 [Ann Hui] takes her third trip to the literary well of late Shanghai-born writer Zhang Ailing 张爱玲 [Eileen Chang] with Love after Love 第一炉香, sadly with underwhelming results. The best of Xu has never been in her Zhang adaptations, but Love is the weakest of the lot, despite a mostly strong cast led by classy Mainland actress Yu Feihong 俞飞鸿. It’s a tale of high passion that communicates no passion at all. Xu, 74, has always been more comfortable with contemporary stories than costume or period ones, and Love continues the ho-hum track record she’s had since her artistic high with A Simple Life 桃姐 (2011). China box office on the Mainland-funded movie was a meh RMB64 million when it opened this autumn – little improvement on her clunky WW2 resistance drama Our Time Will Come 明月几时有 (2017, RMB62 million) and uninvolving period biopic The Golden Era 黄金时代 (2014; RMB52 million).

The script is by veteran Shanghai-raised writer Wang Anyi 王安忆, who co-wrote the original story for Temptress Moon 风月 (1996, dir. Chen Kaige 陈凯歌) and whose popular 1995 novel The Song of Everlasting Sorrow 长恨歌 was adapted into the handsome but dramatically under-cooked Everlasting Regret 长恨歌 (1995, dir. Guan Jinpeng 关锦鹏 [Stanley Kwan]). Zhang’s stories don’t always translate easily to the screen, the most notable example being Lust, Caution 色，戒 (2007), which required an enormous amount of invention by its scriptwriters to convert the original 30-page short story to a feature-length drama. Love falls somewhere in the middle – based on the novella Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier 沈香屑•第一炉香, first serialised across three issues of the Shanghai literary magazine Violet 紫罗兰 in 1943 (see left), it is in some ways quite close to the original and in others quite far.

Centred on a Shanghai teenager, Ge Xiaolong, who asks the help of an aunt to be able to stay on at a Hong Kong high school when her father tells her to return home, it’s shot through with many of the themes that are close to Xu’s (and Wang’s) heart, such as race, cultural identity, separation from one’s roots, and abiding passions that seem to come out of nowhere. (Xu herself was born in northeast China to a Chinese father and Japanese mother, but largely raised in Hong Kong.) Though Shanghai is never seen, its cosmopolitan 1930s shadow hangs over the Hong Kong socialite set into which Ge Xiaolong is parachuted via her wealthy, hedonistic aunt – who spots an opportunity to get back at Ge Xiaolong’s father for an earlier injustice but who finds herself nursing a potential competitor in her bosom. On paper, all the elements are there for a heated period drama in the shadow of WW2, but the film hardly ever rises to its potential. With most of the film set in the aunt’s hilltop mansion, and urban Hong Kong only briefly glimpsed about 80 minutes in, Love lacks any sense of dramatic flux or flow, let alone any Dangerous Liaisons-like machinations that are so strongly hinted at early on.

Love in a Fallen City and Eighteen Springs had some of the same dramatic dryness, but were helped along by their lead performances (Miao Qianren 缪骞人 [Cora Miao] and Zhou Runfa 周润发 [Chow Yun-fat] in Love, Wu Qianlian 吴倩莲 and Mei Yanfang 梅艳芳 [Anita Mui] in Springs) and especially by the music of Ye Xiaogang 叶小钢 in the latter. Love has resonant photography by ace Australian d.p. Christopher Doyle 杜可风 and a rich soundtrack, both evoking Hong Kong’s summer heat, but the script’s blocky construction and Xu’s stolid, literal direction fail to evoke any sense of passion. The film’s pacing problems – which hardly justify the two-hour-plus running time – are not helped by the sparse score (a solo piano every now and then) supervised by Japan’s Sakamoto Ryuichi 坂本龙一.

On the acting side, the effortlessly stylish Yu, 50, last seen as the lead in Wish You Were Here 在乎你 (2018), dominates the film as the manipulative aunt, even though the script never exactly spells out what she’s hoping to, or actually does, achieve. As the initially meek and respectful high-schooler who learns from her aunt when falling for a self-confessed lothario, top-billed Ma Sichun 马思纯 (SoulMate 七月与安生, 2016; Somewhere Winter 大约在冬季, 2019; Wild Grass 荞麦疯长, 2020) is predictably good, even if, like Yu, she’s perpetually constrained by the script. The main weakness in the top cast, as in Xu’s Our Time Will Come, is Taiwan’s Peng Yuyan 彭于晏 [Eddie Peng], here playing the serial Eurasian womaniser for whom Ge Xiaolong can’t stop herself falling; as so often, Peng is okay in the charming moments but has no dramatic depth in anything more challenging. Quality playing on the sidelines comes from Mainland comedian Fan Wei 范伟, as a somewhat creepy ex-lover of the aunt, and Hong Kong’s Qin Pei 秦沛 [Paul Chun] as the playboy’s wealthy father. Semi-retired Liang Luoshi 梁洛施 [Isabella Leong], herself Eurasian, pops up likeably as the playboy’s mixed-race sister with some interesting ideas on sexual desire, while German-born, Taiwan-raised Zhang Junning 张钧甯 (Dinner for Six 六人晚餐, 2016) is okay as one of the aunt’s maids.

Despite being set in Hong Kong, the film was entirely shot in the Mainland – Xiamen and Shanghai – in summer 2019. Where the meaningless English title came from is anyone’s guess; the Chinese means “The First Brazier”, with intimations of first love and aroused passions.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Alibaba Pictures (CN), Hehe (Shanghai) Pictures (CN), Blue Bird Film (Shanghai) (CN). Produced by Blue Bird Film (Shanghai) (CN).

Script: Wang Anyi. Novella: Zhang Ailing [Eileen Chang]. Photography: Christopher Doyle. Editing: Xue Meilian [Mary Stephen]. Editing advice: Kuang Zhiliang. Music supervision: Sakamoto Ryuichi. Art direction: Zhao Hai. Styling: Wada Emi. Sound: Du Duzhi, Wu Shuyao. Visual effects: Lin Zhemin (Bulky VFX Studio).

Cast: Ma Sichun (Ge Xiaolong), Yu Feihong (Mrs. Liang), Peng Yuyan [Eddie Peng] (George Qiao), Zhang Junning (Ni’er), Fan Wei (Uncle Situ), Qin Pei [Paul Chun] (Qiao Cheng), Zhang Jianing (Didi), Bai Bing (Qiao Cheng’s new wife), Yi Fang (Lu Zhaolin), Liang Luoshi [Isabella Leong] (Kitty Qiao), Zhuo An, Ai Wenyi (young maids), Liu Chunxia (fat lady), Stuart Forbes (Kitty Qiao’s boyfriend), Chen Qiang (tailor), Zou Yuheng (Didi’s father), Fan Lili (Didi’s mother).

Premiere: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition), 8 Sep 2020.

Release: China, 22 Oct 2021.