Model
我是监护人
China/US, 2020, colour, 2.35:1, 105 mins.
Director: Jing Ran 敬然.
Rating: 5/10.
Light drama about a Chinese student in New York who’s saddled with her baby half-brother is very predictable.
STORY
New York, summer 2019. Raised in Beijing, 24-year-old Shi Lu (Shang Yuxian) has been in the US for eight years studying architecture at Columbia University and supporting herself by doing deliveries for a Chinese restaurant owned by Zhou (Arthur Lai). She is estranged from her family: her mother left eight years ago and now lives in South Africa, and her father, who manages a construction company in Beijing, remarried. With only a month left on her student visa, and threatened with eviction for unpaid rent, Shi Lu applies for a job as a junior at Greyson Architects. Suddenly her father Shi Yi (Wang Yanhui), who doesn’t speak English, flies in from Beijing and turns up at the restaurant with a seven-year-old boy, Cody (Lin Jingzhe), whom he introduces as her step-brother. Frostily received by Shi Lu, he tells her the boy has Hepatitis C, and he’s brought him for a course of new treatment in the US. He’s told the boy it’s just a course of special vitamins. The boy’s mother (Tian Yuan) was unable to come as she was refused a visa due to mental problems she had following the boy’s birth, so he’s handing Cody over to Shi Lu for three months. Shi Lu walks away, saying the boy is not her responsibility. But when she’s offered a three-month trial by Greyson Architects, and learns she can quickly extend her visa if she becomes the legal guardian of the boy – who was actually born in California, as an “anchor baby”, so is a US citizen – she agrees to her father’s proposal. He also gives her US$40,000 cash, for expenses. At Greyson Architects, Shi Lu works under demanding head architect Eloa Sousa (Amy Gordon), who will eventually choose between her and another applicant, Bella (Ivy Mallory). Cody can speak some English as he loves US junk culture, but he soon gets homesick and starts causing trouble for Shi Lu with his tantrums. Rod (Charles Justo), a friend from the restaurant, says she can’t leave the boy alone all day and is legally required to send him to a day school. Rod, who likes Shi Lu, helps out by collecting Cody and cooking dinner at her flat. When Cody over-exerts himself at day school and is hospitalised, he learns he has Hepatitis C but accepts it when Shi Lu explains things. Thereon their relationship slowly starts to improve. But then Shi Lu has a setback during her trial period at Greyson Architects, as well as a major argument with Rod’s Latino family at the birthday party of his sister (Vanessa Hada). Cody runs off, and his father flies in from Beijing in a panic.
REVIEW
A New York-based student architect spars with her estranged dad from Beijing and a step-brother she’s never met in Model 我是监护人, a nicely shot but utterly predictable light drama that feels more American than Chinese in its emotional rhythms and plot devices, and can’t seem to think beyond filmy cliches. Beijing-born writer-director Jing Ran 敬然 lived in the US for almost 10 years, studying direction at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and working largely as a storyboard artist on various US animated features. Model is her first full-length, live-action film following her 12-minute US short Fish Stew (2017), also about the uneasy relationship between a woman and her father. After premiering at the Shanghai festival in summer 2020 – under the Chinese title 落地生 (literally, “Anchor Baby”) – it opened commercially in the Mainland in autumn 2021, taking a puny RMB4 million.
Most of the film’s weaknesses stem from the script – by Jing, Guo Feifei 郭菲菲 (one of four writers on rom-com A Wedding Invitation 分手合约, 2013) and Laurel Minter (a Los Angeles-based writer-director) – which spends the first 20 minutes setting up an elaborate reason for the main character being forced to look after a young half-brother she’s never met. Only then does the film really start, and in an entirely predictable way as the spoiled brat causes endless problems for the self-centred, career-driven woman who desperately needs the job she’s on trial for. You just know that, after many trials and tribulations, it’s all gong to end in a rosy family glow between her and her sibling and estranged father, and that she is going to learn valuable lessons in not being so selfish and self-reliant, especially in a foreign country. The only real surprise is that she doesn’t also end up with the kindly, sensible Latino friend who obviously fancies her despite all her lack of encouragement. (The manufactured sequence of a row with his hot-blooded sister is toe-curlingly cliched.)
The film deserves an extra point for the lead performances, especially by reliable character actor Wang Yanhui 王砚辉 (Back to the Wharf 风平浪静, 2020) as the father and young newcomer Lin Jingzhe 林靖喆 as the annoyingly precocious seven-year-old kid (who speaks remarkable English supposedly learned from watching US junk culture). In her first big-screen leading role, 27-year-old Shang Yuxian 尚语贤 (computer-hacker Kiko in the second and third Detective Chinatown 唐人街探案 films) shows impressive gravity in a serious role but hardly makes her character very sympathetic, largely because of the cards she’s dealt by the script. In a handful of barnstorming scenes, US actress-singer Amy Gordon almost steals the whole film as the girl’s hard-arsed boss who can spot a toady a mile off.
Technically the film is very smooth, from the understated widescreen images by New York-based d.p. Zach Kuperstein (The Eyes of My Mother, 2016; The Climb, 2019), and the sparingly used chamber score and occasional soundtrack songs. Cutting by experienced indie editor Kong Jinlei 孔劲蕾 is way tighter than on Striding into the Wind 野马分鬃 (2020), produced around the same time. The film’s Chinese title means “I Am the Guardian”, referring to the main character’s temporary custody of her half-brother; the more obscure English one presumably refers to the architectural miniatures she constructs.
CREDITS
Presented by Zhejiang Eagle Media (CN), Beijing Black Rhino Films (CN), Beijing United Entertainment Partners Media (CN), Art-Z Group (US). Produced by Beijing Black Rhino Films (CN).
Script: Jing Ran, Guo Feifei, Laurel Minter. Photography: Zach Kuperstein. Editing: Kong Jinlei. Music: Charles Monnet, Pantawit Kiangsiri. Art direction: Doriane Desfaugeres. Styling: Wang Jiahui. Sound: Feng Yanming, Thom Schmidt.
Cast: Shang Yuxian (Shi Lu), Wang Yanhui (Shi Yi, Shi Lu’s father), Lin Jingzhe (Cody, Shi Lu’s step-brother), Tian Yuan (Shi Lu’s step-mother), Charles Justo (Rod), Amy Gordon (Eloa Sousa), Ivy Mallory (Bella), Sharon Speer (Alisa Cohen, Child Protective Services official), Trent Stone (Frank Taylor, Greyson Architects personnel head), Vanessa Hada (Lucia, Rod’s sister), Arthur Lai (Zhou, restaurateur), Peyton King Bittings (Asha), Helene Estos (Eloa Sousa’s assistant).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Asian New Talent Awards), 29 Jul 2020.
Release: China, 29 Oct 2021; US, tba.