Mr. Zheng
叫我郑先生
China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 100 mins.
Director: Zou Dequan 邹德全.
Rating: 4/10.
Semi-road movie about two grieving souls is nicely shot and played but very inconsequential and never involving.
STORY
Qingdao city, northern China, the present day. Old Zheng (Tumen), widowed since 2016, visits his wife’s grave and tells her he’ll soon be moving to an old people’s home, along with his best friend Liang Xuecheng (Liu Sha) with whom he regularly goes fishing. That night he cooks a fish meal for Liang Xuecheng on the occasion of the latter’s birthday. Meanwhile, a young woman, Hui (Wang Zhen’er), continues to care for her husband Lin Yu, who has been in a coma for the past three years since a car accident that she partly blames herself for. Despite his parents’ entreaties that she should just let him go, she devotedly feeds and washes him, and is one day given hope when a finger twitches. However, she temporarily passes him into their care when she decides to go away for a while. Zhang is shocked one day when he hears Liang has suddenly died. Now essentially alone, and becoming more and more forgetful as the early stages of Alzheimer set in, he remembers his wife’s advice that places you revisit are the hardest to forget, so flies off to Taiwan, which he last visited with her 30 years ago. In the only old-style song hall left in Taibei, he by chance meets Hui, who sings a song in memory of her husband. She is touring the island and, after the two of them have dinner at a fish restaurant that Zheng remembers, she suggests they travel west together next morning. He has a detailed itinerary of places he wants to revisit, ending in a pebble beach; she has come to record natural sounds to help her husband maybe wake up. As they spend more time together, Zheng says she reminds him of his late wife when she was young. But when they get lost in a forest, both start to question what the point of their trips is.
REVIEW
Shot in autumn 2018, and one of the last roles by Inner Mongolian-born actor Tumen 涂们 (who died on 12 Dec 2021, aged 61), Mr. Zheng 叫我郑先生 is nicely cast, immaculately shot, but very inconsequential. The first feature by Shandong-born film-maker Zou Dequan 邹德全, and largely filmed in Taiwan with a local d.p. (Huang Qingcheng 黄庆成) and editor (veteran Liao Qingsong 廖庆松), it’s a semi-road movie in which two strangers, an old widower and a younger semi-widow, meet by chance on their separate journeys to perpetuate the memories of their loved ones. Tumen is nicely paired with Jiangsu-born actress Wang Zhen’er 王真儿, 30 at the time of shooting, but the script by Zou and Du Haipeng 杜海朋 is frustratingly woolly, with no shape or sense of dramatic momentum and throwing up ideas about old age, memory, devotion and so on that are just left hanging in the breeze. Finally released in late 2022, it took a miniscule RMB1.2 million.
Though Tumen was best known for playing the famed Mongol leader in Genghis Khan 一代天骄成吉思汗 (1998) and An End to Killing 止杀令 (2012), he was capable of much more, such as the gruff husband in Heavenly Grassland 天上草原 (2002). Zou actually cast him after seeing his face on the poster of Old Beast 老兽 (2017), in which the actor managed to make an unsympathetic old rogue at least watchable, and there’s more than a bit of that character in his phlegmatic widower Zheng. The first half-hour separately sketches Zheng – following the sudden death of his only remaining friend and the gradual onset of Alzheimer’s – and a younger woman who’s been devotedly caring for her husband since he went into a coma three years ago. Convinced he’ll still wake up one day – despite the more realistic diagnosis of her in-laws – she takes a short break to record some natural sounds to hasten his recovery.
The meeting of the two in an old-style Taibei song hall feels more like a script device than a realistic encounter, as both are completely in their own shells, he somewhat grumpily, she somewhat dreamily. But despite little help from the script, the actors themselves manage to make the relationship more convincing as time wears on, with Tumen revealing a kindlier side as Zheng is reminded of his late wife and Wang (so good as the lead in Blue Amber 淡蓝琥珀, 2018) also unbending and meeting him on the same level. However, the film still can’t solve its central problem – of involving the viewer in a story of two self-absorbed characters (especially the young woman), whose need for companionship is totally selfish. The film’s ending, which seems deliberately vague, is hardly worth the journey.
The city in the opening scenes is never identified, though it is, in fact, Qingdao, in coastal northern China. And though the island round which both happen to travel is never formally identified, the Mandarin accents and other details confirm it is Taiwan. To further confuse the situation, Hong Kong character actor Lin Xue 林雪 [Lam Suet] pops up in one scene as a jovial taxi driver speaking Cantonese-accented Mandarin; but a later (also one-scene) appearance by Taiwan actor Gao Jie 高捷 [Jack Kao], as a mild-mannered bookshop owner, clearly underlines the film’s main section is set in Taiwan. Both cameos, however, are distracting rather than dramatically helpful, and simply highlight the lack of character colour in the rest of the film. A similar drop in emotional temperature afflicts the opening section with the sudden death of Zheng’s best pal (big-heartedly played by actor Liu Sha 刘沙).
The film’s Chinese title means “Call Me Mr. Zheng”. Creative producer 监制, Hong Kong-based Lin Bingkun 林炳坤, has a long track record in both commercial and artier stuff (A Simple Life 桃姐, 2011; The White Storm 扫毒, 2013; Overh3ard 窃听风云3, 2014; Our Time Will Come 明月几时有, 2017). The film is not to be confused with Mr. Zheng 老郑飞到天上去了 (2021), directed by Wang Xiaofeng 王晓丰 and starring Zhang Songwen 张颂文 as an unemployed middle-aged divorcee who becomes an internet celebrity.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Dafu Qinren Technology (CN).
Script: Zou Dequan, Du Haipeng. Photography: Huang Qingcheng. Editing: Liao Qingsong. Music: Li Peng. Art direction: Yang Changzhi, Huang Qianrong. Costumes: Zhang Xiaoxiao. Styling: Zhang Xiaoxiao. Sound: Zhang Wenjuan.
Cast: Tumen (Zheng), Wang Zhen’er (Hui), Lin Xue [Lam Suet] (taxi driver), Gao Jie [Jack Kao] (bookshop owner), Liu Sha (Liang Xuecheng), Li Guilian (Mrs. Zheng).
Release: China, 11 Nov 2022.