The Golden Era

黄金时代

China/Hong Kong, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 178 mins.

Director: Xu Anhua 许鞍华 [Ann Hui].

Rating: 6/10.

Biopic on 1930s writer Xiao Hong is holed by a miscast Tang Wei and an uninvolving structure.

STORY

Northeast China, the early 1930s. Born into a land-owning family in Hulan county, Heilongjiang province, (then) Manchuria, at the age of 20 Zhang Naiying, aka Xiao Hong (Tang Wei), runs off with her married cousin Lu Zheshun to Beijing but, after being abandoned by him due to family pressure, returns back home to her tyrannical father. After 10 months of being locked up, she escapes to Harbin and lives on her own in poverty. After her family is ruined, she takes up with Wang Enjia (Yuan Wenkang), the man her father had wanted her to marry. After moving into a comfortable hotel, she’s abandoned by him, pregnant and with an unpaid hotel bill. In Jul 1932 Xiao Hong writes a letter appeaing for financial help to Fei (Qian Bo), editor of the journal International Gazette, whose committee sends round one of its writers, Xiao Jun, aka San Lang (Feng Shaofeng), to meet her. They instantly fall for each other. During a flood in Harbin, Xiao Hong gives birth to a child but immediately has it adopted. The following winter, Xiao Jun gets a job as a tutor and their situation improves. When International Gazette is investigated during a KMT crackdown on members of the banned Communist Party, literary editor Bai Lang (Tian Yuan) and writer Luo Feng (Zu Feng) send Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun away for their own safety to Qingdao, along with their friend Shu Qun (Sha Yi). After Shu Qun is arrested by the KMT, they travel on south to Shanghai, where in 1934 they make the acquaintance of Lu Xun (Wang Zhiwen), China’s most celebrated writer of the era, and his live-in partner Madam Xu (Ding Jiali). As Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun gradually become estranged, she travels to Japan, where she stays for two years in what she calls her “golden era” – safe, financially secure but “in a cage”. She’s initially befriended by a married Chinese woman there, Xu Yuehua (Yang Xue), who returns early to Shanghai due to family problems. While in Japan, Xiao Hong learns of Lu Xun’s death from tuberculosis, and in 1937 she returns to Shanghai, where Xiao Jun and Xu Yuehua have had a brief affaire. When the Sino-Japanese War officially starts in July, and most of Shanghai is occupied, Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun flee west to Wuhan, central China, where they spend time with writers Jiang Xijin (Zhang Yi), Zhang Meilin (Wang Ziyi) and Duanmu Hongliang (Zhu Yawen), the last a particular admirer of Xiao Hong’s works and also from the northeast. Travelling northwards to Shaanxi as part of the Northwestern Combat Zone’s Service Group, they get to know China’s most famous female writer Ding Ling (Hao Lei), already a committed communist. When Xiao Jun decides to stay with the army, Xiao Hong goes to Xi’an with her friends Hongliang and poet-writer Nie Gannu (Wang Qianyuan). In 1938 she marries Duanmu Hongliang, even though she’s pregnant by Xiao Jun, and gives birth to the child in Chongqing, helped by her old friend Bai Lang. The child dies three days later. In 1940 Xiao Hong and Duanmu Hongliang fly to Hong Kong, where she’s helped by leftist publisher Zhou Jingwen (Zhang Jiayi) and befriended by Luo Binji (Huang Xuan), a friend of her younger brother. In 1941 Xiao Hong is diagnosed with tuberculosis, and at the end of the year, as her health worsens, Hong Kong falls to the Japanese.

REVIEW

Two years after Mainland director Huo Jianqi 霍建起 (Postmen in the Mountains 那人那山那狗, 1998; Life Show 生活秀, 2002) had a go with his lushly-shot Falling Flowers 萧红 (2012), Hong Kong’s Xu Anhua 许鞍华 [Ann Hui] has a second crack at the challenge of a biopic about celebrated 1930s writer Xiao Hong – with similarly mixed results. Clocking in at three hours – an hour longer than Huo’s version – and considerably more detailed in almost every respect, The Golden Era 黄金时代 ends up equally uninvolving on an emotional level. That’s largely thanks to the miscasting of China-born actress Tang Wei 汤唯 (Lust, Caution 色，戒, 2007; Wu Xia 武侠, 2011), who not only looks equally unlike the real character as Blossoms‘ Song Jia 宋佳 but also brings much less conviction to the role of the disaster-prone authoress, who packed more incident into her life than most people before dying of TB in Hong Kong at the age of 30.

One of the main problems of making a biopic of Xiao Hong (1911-42) is that her story not only roams all over the country in one of its most turbulent periods (Northeast China/Manchuria, Shanghai, Japan, Wuhan, Shaanxi province, Chongqing, Hong Kong) but also contains a mass of literary figures of the age, besides her own chaotic love life and two pregnancies. It’s more suited to a multi-part TV drama than the structural constraints of the big screen. And any movie about her has to find some kind of dramatic through-line to hold things together, as well as an actress who can command the screen while often playing second fiddle to better-known people. The sad fact is that, at the time, Xiao Hong was less famous as a writer than her great love, Xiao Jun; only 40 years later were her lucidly composed works re-discovered and re-assessed. As one character notes in the movie, Xiao Hong’s writing was reckoned to have more style but Xiao Jun’s more import and meaning.

Xu, who was herself born in Manchuria before moving to Hong Kong at a young age, would seem to have a natural empathy for the subject, though the script was actually the idea of Henan-born writer Li Qiang 李樯, who wrote Xu’s somewhat awkward comedy-drama The Postmodern Life of My Aunt 姨妈的后现代生活 (2006) as well as Gu Changwei’s Peacock 孔雀 (2004) and And the Spring Comes 立春 (2006) and the recent directing debut by actress Zhao Wei 赵薇, So Young 致我们终将逝去的青春 (2013). Li’s liking for structural gambles is evident in the film’s use of “witnesses” to Xiao Hong’s life, with characters (including Xiao Hong herself) speaking directly to the screen. For a life about which so much is still unclear, and has to be deciphered from references in her own writings, this is a neat idea. But Li doesn’t really develop it in any meaningful way, content just to use his “witnesses” as shortcuts to keep the story moving along. Though Era starts out promising to be a radical biopic like Centre Stage 阮玲玉 (1991, aka Actress), by Guan Jinpeng 关锦鹏 [Stanley Kwan], it actually becomes more and more conventional as the film goes on.

As a director, Xu has always seemed more comfortable with contemporary settings than costume or period ones: her clunky martial-arts epic The Romance of Book and Sword 书剑恩仇录 (1987) and stiff period melodrama Eighteen Springs 半生录 (1997) have none of the warmth and humanity of her best modern-day movies like The Story of Woo Viet 胡越的故事 (1981), My American Grandson 上海假期 (1991), Ah Kam 阿金 (1996), Ordinary Heroes 千言万语 (1999) or A Simple Life 桃姐 (2011). In her Zhang Ailing 张爱玲 [Eileen Chang] adaptation, Love in a Fallen City 倾城之恋 (1984), she was served by perfect casting and some great lead chemistry; in Era she has a charismatic lineup of Mainland talent that’s let down by the big hole of Tang’s central performance.

Fast building up an impressive body of work (Love Will Tear Us Apart 我想和你好好的, 2013; The Continent 后会无期, 2014), Feng Shaofeng 冯绍峰 makes a charismatic, virile Xiao Jun, believably reincarnating his photos; likewise, Wang Zhiwen 王志文 as the sickly but quietly dignified Lu Xun, Ding Jiali 丁嘉丽 as his devoted live-in partner Madam Xu, Hao Lei 郝蕾 as the lusty, busty writer Ding Ling, Tian Yuan 田原 as literary editor Bai Lang, and Zhang Jiayi 张嘉译 in a small, late-on role as leftist Hong Kong publisher Zhou Jingwen. Looking and acting way too modern throughout, Tang is unable even to come up with a consistent style of delivering her dialogue, wobbling between softer standard Mandarin and a hard, gutsy northern accent. She seems out of place from the start and doesn’t make Xiao Hong (for all her faults) somebody worth caring about across three hours of drama and tragedy. It’s a typically loose, unfocused performance by the 34-year-old actress that seeps out into the rest of the movie. Her best scenes are those for Xiao Hong’s final days, during which the film does finally deliver an emotional punch.

Art direction by Zhao Hai 赵海 (The Chef The Actor The Scoundrel 厨子戏子痞子, 2013), varying from the Russian-influenced northeast through western-influenced Shanghai to colonial Hong Kong, is more flavoursome than the costume design, which has a standard TV drama look with modern tailoring. Action scenes are relatively modest and sparse, given the long running-time, with those during the bombing of Hong Kong among the most elaborate. Throughout, the widescreen photography by Wang Yu 王昱 (Suzhou River 苏州河, 1999; Zhou Yu’s Train 周渔的火车, 2002; Purple Butterfly 紫蝴蝶, 2003) is versatile across the film’s many moods, from the snowy northeast via the overcast Yangtze to dusty Shaanxi. The Golden Era rarely drags, thanks to its large cast and mobile story, but it never grips the imagination either – or comes to terms with its fascinating central character.

CREDITS

Presented by Stellar Mega Films (CN), China Film (CN), Edko Films (HK), Beijing Spring Film & TV Culture (CN), Beijing Cheerland Film & TV Culture Communication (CN), Beijing Caissa Culture Communication (CN), JQ Pictures (CN), 21st Century Media (CN). Produced by JQ Pictures (CN), Beijing Spring Film & TV Culture (CN), Stellar Mega Films (CN).

Script: Li Qiang. Photography: Wang Yu. Editing: Wei Shufen. Editing consultation: Kuang Zhiliang. Music: Eli Marshall. Art direction: Zhao Hai. Costume design: Wen Nianzhong [Man Lim-chung]. Costumes: Luo Jiahui, Pan Suchen. Sound: Du Duzhi. Visual effects: Gao Yuan, Jin Xu (Illumina).

Cast: Tang Wei (Zhang Naiying, aka Xiao Hong), Feng Shaofeng (Xiao Jun), Wang Zhiwen (Lu Xun), Zhu Yawen (Duanmu Hongliang), Huang Xuan (Luo Binji), Hao Lei (Ding Ling), Yuan Quan (Mei Zhi), Tian Yuan (Bai Lang), Ding Jiali (Madam Xu), Wang Qianyuan (Nie Gannu), Sha Yi (Shu Qun), Zu Feng (Luo Feng), Zhang Yi (Jiang Xijin), Feng Lei (Hu Feng), Yuan Wenkang (Wang Enjia), Chen Yuemo (Jin Jianxiao), Wang Ziyi (Zhang Meilin), Zhang Jiayi (Zhou Jingwen), Wang Jingchun (Huang, landlord), Yang Xue (Xu Yuehua), Jiao Gang (Huang Yuan), Zhang Bo (Wang Enjia’s brother), Zhang Yao (Zhou Ying), Ling Zhenghui (Zhang Xiuke), Qian Bo (Fei), Luo Meng (female student).

Premiere: Venice Film Festival (closing film, out of competition), 6 Sep 2014.

Release: China, 1 Oct 2014; Hong Kong, 1 Oct 2014.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 7 Sep 2014. Read review of Falling Flowers here: https://sino-cinema.com/2015/12/26/review-falling-flowers/.)