River of Salvation
一江春水
China, 2020, colour, 1.33:1, 108 mins.
Director: Gao Qisheng 高启盛.
Rating: 5/10.
Well-played study of a 30-something woman in workaday central China doesn’t really fulfil its promise.
STORY
Shiyan city, northwest Hubei province, central China, the present day. He Yurong (Li Yanxi), 32, works at a small pedicurist business owned by her boyfriend Zhao Sanqiang (Chen Chuankai). Three other women, including Jinhua (Liu Jun), work there but she is essentially the manager, and the only one whom Zhao Sanqiang says he trusts. Business is poor compared with a few years ago and only just breaking even; the other women often talk about leaving and going home. He Yurong lives with her younger brother Xiaodong (Zhu Kangli), 18, a layabout who spends all his time playing computer games instead of studying at crammer school for university. He’s also going out with the equally lazy Yang Wenjing (Yang Peiqi), a fellow crammer student who’s also 18. One day He Yurong is summoned by Zhao Sanqiang’s mother (Pan Juju) and told she cannot marry him. Soon afterwards Yang Wenjing tells Xiaodong that she’s pregnant. He Yurong tells Zhao Sanqiang that their receptionist, Zhao Xun (Xi Kang), has been stealing the company’s money; Zhao Sanqiang freaks out and sacks Zhao Xun. He Yurong tries to give Yang Wenjing RMB5,000 on behalf of her brother but Yang Wenjing refuses the money. When Xiaodong hears what his sister did, he storms out. Later, Yang Wenjing tells He Yurong that she and her brother have split up; she only said she was pregnant to test him. After being rocked by two revelations – one about an old client and friend, Auntie Tian (Huang Daosheng), and another about Zhao Sanqiang – He Yurong leaves her job and stays at home with Xiaodong, who’s returned with his tail between his legs. She tries to teach him cooking and a sense of responsibility. But she’s already secretly planning to leave Shiyan and go back to her home in northeast China, for a very special reason.
REVIEW
An interesting first feature by Xi’an-born film-maker Gao Qisheng 高启盛 that doesn’t really fulfil its promise, River of Salvation 一江春水 has an involving first hour but then hangs fire for a while before concluding with an ironic twist and a so-what ending. Centred on a selfless woman in her early 30s, whose ordered life in a drab, hard city in central China gradually fragments with one after another small betrayal, it’s sustained by a characterful cast – led by Wuhan-born actress Li Yanxi 李妍锡 in her first substantial lead role – and Gao’s self-effacing direction of the natural performances. Finally released in Jan 2022 after two years of festival dates, it took a tiny RMB2.3 million.
Now 49, Gao started as a scriptwriter before co-directing the TVD Magic Club 梦幻公馆 (2011) and then writing and directing indie featurette Split 分裂I 906号患者档案 (2016), a two-handed paranormal mystery. River immediately announces its indie quality by being shot in 1.33:1 screen ratio and an unaffected style, with minimal camera movement, that’s all in service to the cast. The central character, He Yurong (Li), is a quiet woman who seems quite happy with her lot, working as a pedicurist in a small foot spa where business is just breaking even and most of her female co-workers are talking about moving on or going back to their hometowns. She patiently looks after her younger brother, who spends more time with computer games and his trashy girlfriend that cramming for university, and she is having a kind of relationship with the spa’s owner (Chen Chuankai 陈传凯). Gao’s dialogue manages to be both natural and involving, and his direction unhurried but never artificially slow, and He Yurong’s social circle of brother, lover, workmates and so on is gently opened to the viewer.
The announcement by her brother’s girlfriend that she’s pregnant starts a ball rolling that gradually grows in size. Further revelations about a kindly veteran customer (Wuhan theatre actress Huang Daosheng 黄道胜, good), as well as the spa’s owner, plus her brother’s inability to care about anyone except himself, precipitate a decision by He Yurong to throw up her life in the city and return to her hometown in northeast China after almost two decades. This return occupies only the final 15 minutes of the film, but contains a couple of unexpected twists and more information about the lead than in the rest of the picture. He Yurong’s decision also seems ill-prepared for by the previous 90 minutes, during which there’s been virtually no hint of her previous life, no discussion of why she’s ended up in a dead-end city in central China, and no suggestion that she, unlike her co-workers, would ever think of leaving.
After the strong first act, the film starts to mark time from the 50-minute point, as He Yurong leaves her job at the spa and lives at home, trying to make her brother more socially responsible. It’s almost as if Gao doesn’t really know where to go with his material; and the film’s closing minutes, in the snow-covered northeast, add up to little more than a shrug of the shoulders.
Li, 32 at the time of shooting in 2019, is well cast as the selfless heroine who’s buffeted by other people’s petty betrayals, and thankfully avoids playing the role as a victim. As her loyal best friend at the spa, Liu Jun 刘君, a dancer from Wuhan in her first major film role, is equally good in a more outgoing way, while Zhu Kangli 祝康笠 and Yang Peiqi 杨佩琪, as the teenage brother and his girlfriend, are convincing as self-absorbed millennials. Photography by Peng Zhe 彭喆, with whom Gao co-directed Magic Club, is a major contributor, unobtrusively catching the light and shadow both in the dull, workaday city in central China and the snow-covered landscape in the northeast. The film has no music, but it’s not missed. The Chinese title (best known as the first half of that for the 1947 classic The Spring River Flows East 一江春水向东流) literally means “A River’s Spring Water” but, like River of Salvation, doesn’t have much to do with the story.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Montage Universal Film (CN), Dream Traveler (Wuhan) Film & TV Culture Communication (CN), Fox-Free Film (Beijing) (CN). Produced by Dream Traveler (Wuhan) Film & TV Culture Communication (CN), Fox-Free Film (Beijing) (CN), Beijing Montage Universal Film (CN).
Script: Gao Qisheng. Photography: Peng Zhe. Editing: Long Yi. Music: none. Art direction: Long Yi. Costumes: Xia Jongyan. Styling: Xia Jingyan. Sound: Xu Weibing, Che Tianqi.
Cast: Li Yanxi (He Yurong/Wang Dan), Zhu Kangli (Xiaodong), Liu Jun (Jinhua), Yang Peiqi (Yang Wenjing), Chen Chuankai (Zhao Sanqiang), Huang Daosheng (Auntie Tian), Zhou Fei (Wang Yan), Xi Kang (Zhao Xun), Zhang Liangliang (Auntie Tian’s son), Pan Juju (Zhao Sanqiang’s fake mother), Ma Yan (Yang Wenjing’s mother), Dai Erbin (older policeman), Yu Zhe (younger policeman).
Premiere: Winter Film Awards International Film Festival (Feature Film Competition), New York, 23 Feb 2020.
Release: China, 7 Jan 2022.