Miss Petunia

朝颜

China, 2020, colour, 16:9, 87 mins.

Director: Chen Tianyi 陈天衣.

Rating: 6/10.

Rural tale of a young woman’s emotional involvements is always watchable but lacks dramatic focus.

STORY

A village in Hebei province, northern China, 2004. Wang Yuhai, the husband of Li Bayue (Yuan Fan), dies suddenly during a blood transfusion by a doctor, Xu, at a local clinic. In her mid-20s, Li Bayue is left with a young daughter, Kexin (Qi Simin). Sometime later she receives RMB20,000 compensation from Xu but doesn’t accept it. Instead, she leaves the village to live with her parents, half of whose house she’s inherited via Wang Yuhai. The mother (Wang Chunhua) of a young village man, Erxi (Yuan Xiaoying), comes to the house and proposes marriage between Li Bayue and her son. Two years later, Chen Jiaxing (Chen Tianyi), a former high-school fellow student and wannabe boyfriend of Li Bayue, passes by the village, along with Li Bayue’s friend Huzi (Yan Tong), who works for Chen Jiaxing’s car-wash business in the county town. Later, Huzi fills Chen Jiaxing in on local gossip that, despite being married for two years, Erxi and Li Bayue still don’t have a child. In fact, the marriage is not a happy one: Erxi is chronically lazy and spoilt, and Li Bayue wants to move to the county town when she enrols Kexin in a primary school there. She wants to study law at college, having put aside that dream when she married Wang Yuhai. Erxi opposes the move. During the October National Holiday, Huzi again returns to the village with Chen Jiaxing and they play majiang with Li Bayue. Chen Jiaxing is divorced, with a young daughter, Tingting. He and Li Bayue spend time together and one evening make love in the fields. Li Bayue tells Erxi and his parents that she wants a divorce, but they refuse. One rainy night, Erxi and his father (Li Dejun) find Li Bayue and Chen Jiaxing together in the fields, and Chen Jiaxing is hospitalised after they beat him badly. With Huzi acting as middle-man, Li Bayue finally gets her divorce from Erxi. She leaves the village and lives at a new car-wash that Chen Jiaxing has opened with Huzi in the county town. As she studies for her college entrance exam, she finds she’s pregnant, and she and Chen Jiaxing marry in Mar 2007. She is now 27 and could become a lawyer by the time she’s 32. Chen Jiaxing supports her dream, but after the birth of her child the couple have a shock in store.

REVIEW

A rural drama centred on a 20-something woman whose aspirations to become a lawyer are constantly stymied by developments in her emotional life, Miss Petunia 朝颜 is an interesting debut by Mainland writer-director Chen Tianyi 陈天衣 that’s undercut by a lack of dramatic focus in the screenplay. Despite that, it’s never less than watchable, thanks to a strong but no-name cast (including Chen himself) and direction that’s all about the characters and their inner thoughts without being off-puttingly slow and arty. The tiny RMB676,000 box office was average for such low-key indie fare.

Though a southerner from Zhejiang province, where he graduated in stage design back in 2002, Chen, 38, sets the story in Hebei, the northern province that almost completely surrounds Beijing, and uses actors from that province. Shot in Yi county, and with strongly inflected dialogue, the film has a good sense of place, even though the locations in which the story is set are never named. The plot spans five years (2004-9) in the life of Li Bayue, who married young and gave up her dream of studying law at college but who’s now left with a young daughter after her husband, a childhood friend, unexpectedly died. Soon afterwards she’s persuaded into marrying an idle fellow villager out of necessity, but still hopes to pursue her dream in the county town when her daughter goes to primary school there. But then an old flame from her teenage years reappears in the village.

The film’s strength is that it never grandstands Li Bayue’s dreams or disappointments in a doctrinaire way: they’re just there, simmering in the background, like so many tensions in rural societies, and even the end of the film, though optimistic, is inconclusive. Li Bayue is a quiet, dour battler, and in the performance by Hebei-born Yuan Fan 袁梵, 35 – in real life a law graduate from Beijing University – very believable, while being quietly photogenic as well. As her former wannabe flame who’s made good in the county seat with a car-wash business, Chen himself is similarly good – a little bit cocky but never too much. As the two characters’ likeable friend, Hebei-born Yan Tong 闫铜, 34, is fine as the key to their often locked emotions. All the leads play considerably younger than their real ages but effectively so.

Dramatically, however, the film is sometimes too subtle for its own good. The way in which characters are introduced during the first 20 minutes is confusing, and the obviously sizeable backstory between Li Bayue, her late husband and her onetime flame is only glancingly referred to. There are also times when, without grandstanding, the drama could have been enriched by Li Bayue’s character being given more expression and personality.

As well as writing and directing, Chen also takes credit for art direction and editing, both of which are minimal but okay. Music is spare, and photography by Sun Xiangnan 孙向楠 and Yan He 燕鹤 is naturalistic, with no special style but a convincing reality. The film was passed for release late in 2018, and seems to have attended various overseas film events (none major) during 2019. It is, however, copyrighted 2020, the year in which it was finally released in the Mainland.

CREDITS

Presented by Zhejiang Pi Film (CN).

Script: Chen Tianyi. Photography: Sun Xiangnan, Yan He. Editing: Chen Tianyi. Music: Daniel Jacob Teper, An Muning. Art direction: Chen Tianyi. Costumes: Chen Hongxia. Sound: Shi Xiaoxin. Executive direction: Lu Jixiang.

Cast: Yuan Fan (Li Bayue), Chen Tianyi (Chen Jiaxing), Yan Tong (Huzi), Yuan Xiaoying (Erxi), Wang Chunhua (Erxi’s mother), Qi Simin (Kexin, Li Bayue’s daughter), Li Dejun (Erxi’s father), Yuan Junying (Li Bayue’s father), Wang Chan (Manman, Chen Jiaxing’s girlfriend), Li Jianing (Yuan Xiaoyu), Gao Guiqin (Li Bayue’s mother), Li Qingzhu (Wang Delai), Gao Zhihong (village head).

Release: China, 22 Sep 2020.