One Step Away

触不可及

China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 100 mins.

Director: Zhao Baogang 赵宝刚.

Rating: 7/10.

Stylised spy melodrama pushes the envelope, despite using familiar elements.

STORY

Shanghai, 1935. Fu Jingnian (Sun Honglei), operations group leader at the KMT Military Affairs Commission’s Bureau of Investigation & Statistics, is in reality a Communist agent, codename Ice. Following shootings of Communist secret agents all over the city, Fu Jingnian warns his outgoing handler of the past five years, dance teacher Lin Yueying, codename Shadow (Xu Jinglei), to leave, as the network has been penetrated. When her substitute, codename Echo (Huang Lei), is arrested and threatened with torture by BIS chief Ji Zeng’en (Fang Zhongxin), Echo betrays Lin Yueting. Fu Jingnian tries to save her but she commits suicide as she’s arrested at her dance school. As part of his job, Fu Jingnian has to interrogate and torture her devoted assistant, Ning Dai (Gui Lunmei), who recognises Fu Jingnian but doesn’t give the game away. Afterwards, Fu Jingnian suggests to Ji Zeng’en that they put Ning Dai under surveillance at the dance school; during that time, the two fall in love with each other but are forced to keep the relationship secret to preserve Fu Jingnian’s cover. By 1936, Shanghai is under Japanese occupation. The BIS agents, now working undercover, plan to assassinate Japanese general Haga Motokura (Fang Jun) when he visits Ning Dai’s dance school; Fu Jingnian is given the job of firing the main shot from across the street. Realising that Ning Dai could be killed, he tries to evacuate her from the city, but she turns up at the studio and the assassination plan goes ahead. In a street battle afterwards, Fu Jingnian is wounded and arrested. In 1945, at the end of the war, he’s freed from a Japanese prison by the KMT authorities and reinstated with full honours. Ji Zeng’en’s wife (Cai Shaofen) introduces him to a young war widow, Lu Qiuyi (Jiang Qinqin); but then Fu Jingnian discovers Ning Dai is still alive. The two repair the dance school and plan a life together; but then Lu Qiuyi’s father, a senior staff officer in the Ministry of Defence, arranges for Fu Jingnian’s promotion to a post in the ministry in Nanjing. When Fu Jingnian’s new handler, Wang Wanping (Xi Meijuan), says the Communist Party still needs his services as an undercover agent, Fu Jingnian realises he has no option but to marry Lu Qiuyi and take the job.

REVIEW

Though it loses traction in the second half, One Step Away 触不可及 is still a very stylish period spy drama that marks a notable movie debut by Mainland actor-TV director-producer Zhao Baogang 赵宝刚. Wisely assembling some top talent on both sides of the camera, Zhao, 59, turns what could easily have been a glorified small-screen outing into something with genuine big-screen clout. Visually top-drawer, thanks to resonant work by Hong Kong veterans d.p. Huang Yuetai 黄岳泰 [Arthur Wong] and p.d. Liu Minxiong 刘敏雄 [Ben Lau], the story of a Communist mole in the KMT’s security service whose work repeatedly stymies his love for an innocent dance teacher is motored by strong performances from its Greater China cast (Mainlander Sun Honglei 孙红雷, Taiwan’s Gui Lunmei 桂纶镁, Hong Kong’s Fang Zhongxin 方中信 [Alex Fong Chung-sun]) that are perfectly in synch with the movie’s often operatic mounting. Recalling another period spy drama, East Wind Rain 东风雨 (2010, also shot by Wang), in its romantic stylisation, and melodramas like The Phantom Lover 夜半歌声 (1995) in which music plays a key role, Step is to be applauded for pushing the envelope of a familiar genre, even if its latter half doesn’t quite deliver the promised goods.

No one can do blank-faced duplicity better than Sun and here, as a similar character to the one he played in the classic TV spy drama Lurk 潜伏 (2008), he’s perfect casting for the icy Fu Jingnian, a Commie-busting KMT agent who’s actually working for the other side. After the arrest and suicide of his longtime handler who runs a dance school – a classy cameo by Xu Jinglei 徐静蕾, who cast director Zhao in small roles in her Go Lala Go! 杜拉拉升职记 (2010) and Dear Enemy 亲密敌人 (2011) – his deep cover is almost blown; but thanks to the handler’s devoted assistant (Gui), he lives to spy another day, though en route the pair fall for each other. The pull between duty and love, between hiding and disclosing one’s real feelings, is the theme of the script by TV drama duo Gao Xuan 高璇 and Ren Baoru 任宝茹 – who also worked on early drafts of Sacrifice 赵氏孤儿 (2010) by Chen Kaige 陈凯歌 – and is referenced in the film’s Chinese title, roughly meaning “Untouchable”. As his handler tells him at the start, his apparently icy control masks a vulnerable heart.

The opening 50 minutes, set in mid-1930s Shanghai, treads ground already familiar from scores of movies and TV dramas, as well as going for a similarly well-laundered look and using familiar sets on backlots in Shanghai and Hengdian. The script, too, is nothing special at a pure dialogue level, with no literary inflections or subtleties. But Zhao makes a virtue of such familiarity by pushing the visual stylisation to the limit and then stirring a musical element – Carlos Gardel’s famous 1935 tango, Por una cabeza – into the mix. Entranced by both Gui’s cute dance teacher, and the music itself, Sun’s dandy spy – who literally has dancing feet – bonds with her in a series of tangos that are, quite simply, electric.

It’s a huge stylistic gamble that pays off thanks to Sun’s minimalist acting and Gui’s fragile innocence, not to mention Wang’s resonant photography and the striking costumes for Gui by Mainland designer Duan Xiaoli 段小丽. That the latter are barely authentic for the period hardly seems to matter, as it’s clear by now that realism is hardly the aim. The film’s opening sequence immediately sets a theatrical tone that’s then continued by Liu’s cartoony set for a KMT torture chamber next to a plush office; and once the film’s score, by Japanese veteran Umebayashi Shigeru 梅林茂 (Zhou Yu’s Train 周渔的火车, 2002; Curse of the Golden Flower 满城尽带黄金甲, 2006), gets its teeth into Gardel’s swoony tango, One Step Away lifts both feet off the ground. The first-act finale – a bullet-ballet assassination staged like a bloody dance – climaxes the film’s exposition in style.

As the story then jumps ahead to 1945, 1949 and the modern day, the film doeasn’t build up a head of steam equivalent to the tango-like emotional dance of the first 50 minutes – though the two leads’ chemistry briefly reasserts itself here and there. For Sun, it’s another intensely studied performance, marbled with a devil-may-care charm, that continues an unbroken run of fine roles during the past couple of years (Drug War 毒战, 2012; Lethal Hostage 边境风云, 2012; I Do 我愿意, 2012; Silent Witness 全民目击, 2013); for Gui, it’s a role that, emotionally and physically, seems naturally moulded to her in a way that, say, the recent Black Coal, Thin Ice 白日焰火 (2014) or Gf*Bf 女朋友  男朋友 (2012), weren’t, and into which she throws herself totally. Despite their stylisation, the early scenes of her and Sun’s characters gradually coming together are immensely powerful, largely thanks to Gui’s emotional commitment and the way in which her supple grace plays off against Sun’s formal stiffness.

In smaller roles, there’s strong playing by Jiang Qinqin 蒋勤勤 (City of Dream 所有梦想都开花, 2009; Who Is Undercover 一号目标, 2014), as a needy but dignified war widow pushed into Fu Jingnian’s life, and by veteran actress Xi Meijuan 奚美娟 as Fu Jingnian’s later Communist handler. And as Fu’s ruthless, suspicious boss, Fang, who just keeps getting better as he gets older, makes an excellent foil for the central romance.

Stylised or not, the film still contains some sloppy mistakes, including a poster advertising Hollywood movie Fallen Angel (1945) a decade before it was made, and a book cover that uses simplified Chinese in a modern typeface. At one point, Gui’s character orders a takeaway coffee from a cafe, which also feels unauthentic for the period.

CREDITS

Presented by Perfect World (Beijing) Pictures (CN), Shanghai Film Group (CN), China Film (CN), Beijing Xinbaoyuan Movie & TV Investment (CN), Beijing Yuntu Media (CN). Produced by Beijing Xinbaoyuan Movie & TV Investment (CN), Perfect World (Beijing) Pictures (CN), China Film (CN), Shanghai Film Group (CN).

Script: Gao Xuan, Ren Baoru. Photography: Huang Yuetai [Arthur Wong]. Editing: Xu Hongyu [Derek Hui]. Music: Umebayashi Shigeru. End song: Zhang Yadong. Lyrics: Lin Xi [Albert Leung]. Vocal: Wang Fei [Faye Wong]. Production design: Liu Minxiong [Ben Lau]. Art direction: Zhou Shihong, Liang Shiyun. Costume design: Duan Xiaoli. Sound: Wang Danrong, Jiang Peng, Wu Ling, Wang Dong. Action: Hu Zongxiang (Hengdian), Xu Wenge (Shanghai). Special effects: Kim Man-seong. Visual effects: Huang Hongda (VFX Nova Digital). Choreography: Fang Jun, Yang Zhengying. Second unit directors: San Pin, Wang Meng. Executive director: Lv Haojiji.

Cast: Sun Honglei (Fu Jingnian), Gui Lunmei (Ning Dai), Fang Zhongxin [Alex Fong Chung-sun] (Ji Zeng’en), Huang Lei (Echo), Xu Jinglei (Lin Yueying/Shadow), Jiang Qinqin (Lu Qiuyi), Cai Shaofen [Ada Choi] (Ji Zeng’en’s wife), Xi Meijuan (Wang Wanping, doctor), Fang Jun (Haga Motokura), Tan Kai (Tan Shaopei), Duanmu Chonghui (Echo’s wife), An An (Echo’s son), Li Hua, Hao Anlei (KMT female agents).

Release: China, 19 Sep 2014.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 9 Jan 2015.)