The Calming
平静
China, 2020, colour, 1.85:1, 93 mins.
Director: Song Fang 宋方.
Rating: 3/10.
Vacuous navel-gazer aims at a spirituality beyond the film-maker’s grasp.
STORY
Tokyo, the present day, winter. Beijing-based film-maker Lin Tong (Qi Xi) is on her first visit to Japan for an instillation at a gallery. During lunch with a film producer friend (Ichiyama Shozo) Lin Tong tells him she’s broken up with her longtime boyfriend Guiren. The producer invites her to dinner with him and his daughter Makiko (Watanabe Makiko), an actress whom Lin Tong previously met briefly at a film festival. Before returning to Beijing, Lin Tong visits Naoetsu by train. Back in China, she moves into a new flat and resumes work. She shows film-maker friend He Pei (Pei Pei), footage from her latest documentary. Over Chinese New Year she takes the train to Nanjing to visit her parents; her mother (Ye Yuzhu) reveals that her father (Song Dijin), a retired doctor, is quite ill. She next flies to Hong Kong for a screening of one of her documentaries at a film festival; while there she stays with old friend Xuemei (Chen Yadi), who is happily married to a westerner, Darren, and has a young son, Yinuo. While in Hong Kong, she spends a day on Pingzhou [Peng Chau] island, communing with nature. Back in Beijing she gets a stomach pain and visits a hospital. Later she takes the train to visit her parents again and find out how her father is.
REVIEW
Ninety minutes of navel-gazing, via the dreamily vacant stare of willowy Mainland actress Qi Xi 齐溪, The Calming 平静 is one of those films in which you keep waiting for a plot that never appears. The second feature by Jiangsu-born writer-director Song Fang 宋方 (who played the nanny in Paris-set Flight of the Red Balloon 红气球之旅, 2007, by Hou Xiaoxian 侯孝贤) , it’s like a re-run of her first movie, Memories Look at Me 记忆望着我 (2012), also creatively produced 监制 by festival darling Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯 – but this time with most of the dialogue stripped out and a professional actress playing the central film-maker role rather than Song herself.
Given the parlous lack of any content, the benefits of casting Qi are minimal. The 35-year-old, Guizhou-born dancer-turned-actress usually has a considerable screen presence: witness her first main role as the tenacious “other woman” in Mystery 浮城谜事 (2012), the spacey college girlfriend in Ever Since We Loved 万物生长 (2015), the sister-in-law in So Long, My Son 地久天长(2019), and even the confused wife in laughable international thriller The Whistleblower 吹哨人 (2019). But in The Calming she’s only called upon to walk around like a glammed-down automaton, presumably seeking some kind of emotional closure after a breakup with a longtime boyfriend. As she refuses to talk about it, even to a close female friend in Hong Kong, it’s impossible to care. With immaculate, muted visuals by Lv Songye 吕松野 (The Summer Is Gone 八月, 2016) – similar to the Japanese-y look of Memories (by a different d.p.) – and all the silent communing with nature and the heroine’s inner self, the film aims at a spirituality that’s completely beyond Song’s grasp.
As in Memories, Song’s own parents (Ye Yuzhu 叶渝珠, Song Dijin 宋迪进) play the mother and father, the first especially well. Knowing cameos by arty Japanese producer Ichiyama Shozo 市山尚三 and Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum head Wang Qingqiang 王庆锵 [Jacob Wong] underline the sense of indie incestuousness. The film was shot in 2017 and passed for release in 2019.
CREDITS
Presented by Huanxi Media Group (Shanghai) (CN), Huanxi Media Group (Beijing) (CN), Fabula Entertainment (CN), Xstream Pictures (Beijing) (CN). Produced by Xstream Pictures (Beijing) (CN).
Script: Song Fang. Photography: Lv Songye. Editing: Song Fang. Music: none. Art direction: Peng Shaoying, Liu Zhenghong. Sound: Qiao Mingzi, Zhang Yang.
Cast: Qi Xi (Lin Tong), Ye Yuzhu (Lin Tong’s mother), Song Dijin (Lin Tong’s father), Watanabe Makiko (Makiko, Japanese friend’s daughter), Ichiyama Shozo (Japanese friend), Chen Yadi (Xuemei), Pei Pei (He Pei), Wang Qingqiang [Jacob Wong] (festival moderator).
Premiere: Berlin Film Festival (Forum), 22 Feb 2020.
Release: China, tba.