Wonder in the Temple

一百零八

China, 2019, colour, 1.85:1, 103 mins.

Director: Kong Jiahuan 孔嘉欢.

Rating: 5/10.

True story from the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake is a cross between a weepie, heartwarmer and semi-documentary, though with some affecting moments.

STORY

Chengdu city, Sichuan province, southwest China, 12 May 2008. It is 88 days before the start of the Beijing Olympics. Twenty-four-year-old Xiao Lan (Lv Xingchen), a singer in a club, takes a bus to Shifang, about 50 kilometres away, to seek out her husband, composer Lu Di (Gao Liang), who left her two months ago after an argument in which she’d hurt his left hand. On the way, flocks of birds fly in the sky, snakes appear on the road, and the bus stops to help a pregnant woman who’s bleeding. In Shifang, Xiao Lan goes to the house of a friend, Gangzi (Li Yifeng), with whom Lu Di is staying. But Lu Di refuses to see her, telling Gangzi that Xiao Lan had been threatening to commit suicide and claiming she was five months pregnant. Xiao Lan goes to the town’s maternity and child-care clinic, where she sees the head, Chi Jie (Dong Fan), and demands an abortion. Chi Jie orders a test, which shows Xiao Lan has a risk of placenta praevia, so needs immediate attention. Suddenly a huge earthquake hits the town. In the chaos, Xiao Lan helps rescue a baby lying on a trolley and she and the clinic’s staff and patients (including several pregnant women) get permission from Zhiquan (Zhao Yu), abbot of Arhat temple, to take refuge there. Meanwhile, Lu Di searches for her in the ruins of the clinic. A group of men volunteer to go back to the ruined clinic to bring medical supplies and equipment to the temple. Aftershocks hit the temple and a female patient dies; after fainting, Xiao Lan is put on a stretcher. It then starts to rain. In the ruins of the clinic, Lu Di is trapped under some masonry when trying to rescue a pregnant woman who is also trapped. Though weak, Xiao Lan tries to look for Lu Di but eventually collapses and is taken back to the temple. Overnight the first baby is born in the temple. Next day Lu Di tells the pregnant woman that Xiao Lan’s parents both died in a car crash in 2007, so he can’t leave her alone in the world. The army rescues the pregnant woman and puts her in the same tent in the temple as where Xiao Lan is. From something the woman says, Xiao Lan realises she was with Lu Di, so she tries again to find him and continues texting him.

REVIEW

A cross between a weepie, a heartwarmer, a semi-documentary and a tribute movie, Wonder in the Temple 一百零八 is based on a true story during the devastating Sichuan Earthquake of 12 May 2008, when members of a maternity clinic in the town of Shifang took refuge in a Buddhist temple where, over the next three months, children were born numbering 108 (the meaning of the Chinese title). Mainland action star Wu Jing 吴京, who was one of many volunteers at the time, bookends the film on camera, and the actual 108 kids all appear at the end, aged 10. Shot in spring 2018, premiered at a festival the following year and finally released in the Mainland last month, it took some RMB31 million, okay for this kind of modest fare.

It’s the first feature by Harbin-born film-maker Kong Jiahuan 孔嘉欢, 49, a graduate of both the Central Academy of Drama and Beijing Film Academy who’s mostly directed public-service commercials. Since Wonder, he’s shot the semi-autobiographical drama Shaguo 沙果, set in the mid-1990s, which has yet to be released. Kong has done wonders himself on what looks like a modest budget, re-creating the earthquake itself and subsequent panic with vivid, realistic imagery that’s just as good as some bigger earthquake movies. (The actual death toll was some 6,000 in Shifang alone, a town some 50 kilometres from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.) Though women giving birth in a Buddhist temple was against the rules, the abbot made a special exception, thereby enshrining in history both the temple and what took place within its walls.

Kong’s script, written with Qi Wenjuan 祁文娟, centres on Xiao Lan, a young bar singer who’s come to the town looking for her composer husband who walked out on her. Emotionally fragile from recently losing her parents, and claiming to be five months pregnant, she’s in the middle of a checkup when the earthquake strikes the maternity clinic. Thereafter, the fictional plot is basically she and her husband searching for each other in the ruined town, while she remains in doubt whether she’ll be able to even have her baby because of a medical complication. It’s the biggest of a web of individual stories loosely knitted together by the themes of survival and re-birth.

Wonder is pretty much a one-man show by Kong, who produced, co-wrote, edited and designed the film, as well as writing the main song. At times, however, it’s an uneasy mix of documentary realism and soapy drama: obvious care has been taken to make the film as authentic as possible but some individual scenes tilt too obviously towards cliched melodrama. Luckily, the score by Li Mingyou 李明佑 is restrained throughout, making the final half-hour quite affecting in patches. And the versatile photography by Sun Tian 孙田 (Sunlight at Fingertips, 2012) is rooted in reality.

Also helping to keep things on the straight and narrow is the restrained performance by Hangzhou-born actress Lv Xingchen 吕星辰 as Xiao Lan: as in Folk Songs Singing 郎在对门唱山歌 (2011) and Wisdom Tooth 日光之下 (2019), Lv, 27 at the time, traverses a range of emotions without wallowing in any, and often curbs the film’s natural inclination towards overstatement. Her co-star, Sichuan-born Gao Liang 高亮, is unfortunately bland as her husband, weakening the central love story. After Lv, the most commanding performance is by theatre and TV actress Dong Fan 董凡 as the maternity clinic’s very organised head.

CREDITS

Presented by Sichuan Mandala Film Studio (CN), Mulan Culture Media (CN), Beijing Mandala Film Studio (CN), Zhejiang Yongkang Jialan Film Industry (CN), Beijing Qitai Ocean Culture & Media (CN). Produced by Sichuan Mandala Film Studio (CN), Beijing Mandala Film Studio (CN).

Script: Kong Jiahuan, Qi Wenjuan. Photography: Sun Tian. Editing: Kong Jiahuan. Music: Li Mingyou. Songs: Kong Jiahuan (music/lyrics). Art direction: Kong Jiahuan. Costumes: Zhang Zhiqing. Sound: Liu Tao, Zhai Shuo. Special effects: Hou Yanshan. Visual effects: Zhu Quan, Jin Yuewen. Executive direction: Guan Da.

Cast: Lv Xingchen (Xiao Lan), Gao Liang (Lu Di), Dong Fan (Chi Jie, clinic head), Zhao Yu (Zhiquan, abbot), Qu Guoqiang (Kong Deli), Shen Chaojie (Jingming, argumentative monk), Jiang Linyan (Yao Yuan), Wang Jing (Qiu Ping), Tao Zhengdong (Cai Gensheng), Liu Zhengdong (Li Bei, street poet), Li Shaobing (Lu Tianming, Lu Di’s father), Zhou Jing (herself, Lu Di’s mother), Feng Yi (Yingzi, nurse), Su Dexiu (Sun Li, head nurse), Li Yifeng (Gangzi, Lu Di’s friend), Yang Chengliu (Pipi), Wu Jing, Abbot Suquan (themselves), Gui Fengchun (herself, clinic head).

Premiere: Silk Road Film Festival (International Panorama), Fuzhou, 16 Oct 2019.

Release: China, 15 May 2021.