Whisper of Silent Body
秦明•生死语者
China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 103 mins.
Directors: Li Haishu 李海蜀, Huang Yanwei 黄彦威.
Rating: 5/10.
Good-looking but lazily scripted big-screen outing for forensic pathologist Qin Ming.
STORY
Some mountains in Tibet province, southwest China, 16 years ago. A young man and a woman, the latter pregnant, are stranded in the snow; they come across a broken-down bus full of people; some time later the pregnant woman is murdered. Chongjiang city, central China, on the banks of the Yangtse river, 2018. Soon-to-graduate, medical student Fan Jiajia (Dai Si) attends a presentation in which famous forensic pathologist Qin Ming (Yan Yukuan), who first inspired her, discovers the cadaver of Ruan Kaiyuan (Guo Zhen), who donated his body to medical science, has signs of foul play. A few months later, Fan Jiajia finds herself working with Qin Ming during her internship. They are called in to the case of a loan shark, Gu Fan (Wang Haifeng), who had a hatchet buried in his head just as he was calling the police with information about Ruan Kaiyuan’s death. The case is being handled by CID assistant head Lin Tao (Geng Le), who has an edgy relationship with Qin Ming and defends Fan Jiajia when he’s tough on her. With Qin Ming’s help, Lin Tao arrests a suspect for Gu Fan’s death, single-combat champion Kou Yong, aka Mad Dog (Shi Yanneng). Qin Ming aggressively interrogates Kou Yong himself and Lin Tao, annoyed, has him taken off the case for exceeding his duties. Kou Yong then escapes from custody, vowing vengeance on Qin Ming. However, Qin Ming still investigates the case privately, straining his eyes through overwork. He asks the help of Gu Wanyuan (Du Juan), a former colleague and close friend who’s now an agent for medical instruments, to help him get access to Ruan Kaiyuan’s corpse. Inside the hospital he’s attacked and almost killed by Kou Yong, who himself dies due to the intervention of an unseen third person. Qin Ming gets temporary blindness and is ordered to rest; Fan Jiajia looks after him in his home. She offers to be his “eyes” till he recovers, so he can continue investigating Ruan Kaiyuan’s death. Re-examining the corpse, they find Ruan Kaiyuan, like Kou Yong, had two toes missing. Then, in Kou Yong’s medical insurance papers, Fan Jiajia finds another clue. Without telling anyone, she drives off to pursue the lead on her own.
REVIEW
During the end titles of Whisper of Silent Body 秦明•生死语者, real-life forensic pathologists across China talk about the time pressures, public deprecation and social stigma attached to their job of cutting up corpses to determine the cause of death. More’s the pity that the movie preceding their comments doesn’t do them more justice. This first feature film based on the fictional writings of real-life pathologist Qin Ming 秦明 – following several popular online drama series – Whisper is a good-looking, slickly mounted but lazily scripted crime drama in which forensic evidence plays second fiddle to characters rambling on about love, eternity and duty, a subplot that’s more like a high-school love story, and a main plot that is suddenly solved (with minimal forensic input) in the final half-hour, with an unlikely villain pulled out of the hat. Mainland audiences have been unimpressed, the film flopping with a mere RMB30 million.
Qin, 38, is an Anhui-based police forensic pathologist-turned-writer whose novels (inspired by his real cases) have so far been adapted into three online TV drama series: Dr. Qin Medical Examiner 法医秦明 (2016), Dr. Qin Medical Examiner 2 法医秦明2 清道夫 (2018) and Dr. Qin Medical Examiner 3 法医秦明 幸存者 (2018), all with different casts and production teams and shot in different locations. Whisper is (very) loosely adapted from material in his first work, published in book form in 2012 after debuting online, Voice of the Death: The Unpublished Forbidden Forensic Files from the Public Security Bureau 尸语者 公安厅从未公开的法医禁忌档案, which detailed 20 strange cases (see book cover, left). A drama series with a similar Chinese title but different plot, Dead Body Reader 尸语者, was produced by Le Vision Pictures in 2016 but has yet to be broadcast.
Whisper‘s mess is a surprise coming from the writing-directing team of Li Haishu 李海蜀 and Huang Yanwei 黄彦威 who, between TV work together and separately, made the entertaining relationships comedy Meet the In-Laws 搞定岳父大人 (2012) and the fluffy but engaging rom-com Mr Pride and Miss Prejudice 傲娇与偏见 (2016). Whisper starts intriguingly with a young woman’s murder in some snowbound Tibetan mountains and a voice-over narration by another young woman lying dead on a forensic table in central China, before the latter identifies herself as Fan Jiajia, a medical student who ends up interned with her hero, legendary criminal pathologist Qin Ming. A case they’re working on, involving a dead loan shark, may have links with a body Qin Ming had earlier identified as a suspicious death, though he has difficulty cracking the case until the very end. In between, Qin Ming is removed from the case by police pal Lin Tao, almost killed by a crazed martial artist nicknamed Mad Dog, and goes temporarily blind from overwork. In addition, the workaholic, control-freaky pathologist is loved in person and beyond the grave by Fan Jiajia.
Even in western forensic pathology drama series, like the UK’s excellent Silent Witness (1996- ) and Waking the Dead (2000-11), it’s common practice to play loose with the truth of the profession by getting the protagonists out of the lab and into danger. In its first half, however, Whisper pushes that to the extreme, with Qin Ming shown as both an action hero helping to catch a suspect and then as a victim dangling from a skyscraper. Despite being barely credible, the two sequences are grippingly mounted (with separate editing by Liu Honglu 刘红路), so excusable in a big-screen production. What’s less excusable is the soppy, one-sided love story between the doe-eyed Fan Jiajia and tightly-wound Qin Ming; the temper tantrums by Lin Tao and Qin Ming, as the latter exceeds his duty; and the fanciful fantasy sequences that cross time and space – all out-of-order in a drama that’s meant to stress scientific evidence over emotions. The whodunit’s ridiculous solution comes loaded with gobs of backstory crammed into the final half hour.
As Qin Ming and detective Li Tao, male leads Yan Yikuan 严屹宽, 40, and Geng Le 耿乐, 44, are older and more believable than their various TV counterparts but are hobbled by poor dialogue. Largely a TV actor, Yan gets few chances to show a less wooden side; the always reliable Geng is much more natural. In her first big-screen outing, Xinjiang-born Dai Si 代斯 (aka Mukedaisi Ku’erban 穆克代斯•库尔班), 27, is mega-cute but gets little to do apart from provide some girly comedy (selling forensic pathology to the general public) and look gooey-eyed in admiration at Qin Ming. Slightly less icy than usual, actress-model Du Juan 杜鹃 (New York New York 纽约纽约, 2016; Lost in Love 如影随心, 2019) guests as a former colleague of Qin Ming who helps to push the plot along, while real-life Shaolin martial artist Shi Yanneng 释彦能 has a whale of a time as a psychopathic single-combat fighter.
Technical qualities are top-class and earn the film an extra point on their own, led by the coolly pristine widescreen compositions of US d.p. Sean O’Dea (To Live and Die in Ordos 警察日记, 2013; Romance Out of the Blue 浪漫天降, 2015) which serve to make the fictional city of Chongjiang (doubled by Chongqing) a living, breathing metropolis. The film’s Chinese title literally means “Qin Ming, the Life-and-Death Whisperer”.
CREDITS
Presented by Le Vision Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Suniverse Entertainment (Tianjin) (CN). Produced by Le Vision Pictures (Beijing) (CN).
Script: Huang Yanwei, Li Haishu, Zhang Xiujie, Han Rui, Ma Yuehong, Xu Ying. Novel: Qin Ming. Photography: Sean O’Dea. Editing: Liang Guorong [Jacky Leung], Zhu Lin. Action editing: Liu Honglu. Music: He Huihui. Production design: Lv Dong. Art direction: Lan Zhiqiang. Styling: Kong Lingyuan. Sound: Huang He, Zhao Suchen. Action: An Wande. Visual effects: Im Il-hyeok, Yi Seung-je (MAS Image Works). Advice: Qin Ming. Executive direction: Li Shangyong.
Cast: Yan Yikuan (Qin Ming), Dai Si (Fan Jiajia), Geng Le (Lin Tao), Zheng Xiaoning (Zou Huai), Hao Shaowen (Da Bao), Shi Yanneng (Kou Yong/Feng Gou/Mad Dog), Du Juan (Gu Wanyuan), Li Jing (Zhang Jian), Qin Ming (forensic pathologist), Fang Fang (Shu Li, Zou Huai’s wife), Chen Xinqi (Bai Huawei, Zou Huai’s late fiancee), Guo Zhen (Ruan Kaiyuan), Wang Jinxin (Tang Qian), Sun Jianfei (Li Ao), Wang Haifeng (Gu Fan, loan shark), Sun Chenlong (deputy team leader), Yu Chun (police chief), Lan Jing (Shi Xiaowan), Luosang Qunpei (institute head), Liu Shiliu (Wang, Qilan Pharmaceutical CEO), Yu Hongjun (De).
Release: China, 14 Jun 2019.