The Son of Mountain
太行
China, 2018, colour, 16:9, 91 mins.
Director: He Zheng 何政.
Rating: 4/10.
Grungy drama about a teenage loner, his cop father and a female druggie moons around too much.
STORY
A city at the foot of Taihang mountain, Hebei province, northern China, the present day, April. Teenage loner Li Taihang (Wang Bo) regularly skips school, spending time on his beloved motorbike or hanging out with his equally slacker friend Donghai (Gao Xingyue). His divorced father (Li Weidong) is a local policeman who is still obsessed with tracking down the drug dealer who wounded him in a fight a decade ago. Li Taihang steals cash from his father to help pay back petty gangster Bao (Wang Shuo) who loaned him the money to buy the motorbike. One night Li Taihang meets a female druggie, Lin Meng (Chen Xinjie), by the roadside and invites her to a meal at a stall. She’s wary of forming a friendship and, after the meal, disappears. However, on another day the two spend time together at the zoo, and Li Taihang begins to think he may have a girlfriend at last.
REVIEW
A first feature by Shanghai Theatre Academy graduate He Zheng 何政, The Son of Mountain 太行 has the feel of a half-realised project that’s badly in need of several more rewrites. Centred on a loner with a motorbike in a drab northern city – actually He’s hometown of Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province – it’s often nicely composed visually but, like its anti-hero, spends too much time mooning around and saying nothing. He, 26, studied cinematography at STA and shows a good feel for the city’s less glamorous locations. But even at 91 minutes the film is way too long for its content, with over-slow editing, minimal dialogue and little to engage the viewer.
There’s certainly enough here from which a richer movie could have been developed. A teenage loner skips school and whiles away his time on his beloved motorbike; his divorced father is a policeman who’s obsessed with tracking down a drug dealer from years earlier; the son steals cash from him to repay the money-lender who funded his bike; and then the son, desperate for a girlfriend, finally meets a druggie who seems to fit the bill. Alas, He’s script doesn’t really know how to develop all these elements into a compelling screenplay. After a visually over-wrought opening, the film settles down to a leisurely pace, taking 50 minutes to get to the crucial development of the son’s first “date”; the rest of the (admittedly thin) plot is crammed into the second half, with several developments that strain credulity (especially one involving a church). A kind of half-resolution to the father’s story, tacked on like an afterthought, is ironically among the best sequences in the picture.
Performances are OK. Blank-faced Wang Bo 王博 (not to be confused with the identically named actor-director of the My Sister Is School Queen 我的校花妹妹 comedies, 2014-16) is fairly involving as the son, Chen Xinjie 陈昕婕 believable as the wary druggie, and Li Weidong 李伟东 ditto as the upright but obsessed father, especially in the closing moments. The Chinese title is both the son’s given name, Taiheng, and the name of the mountain range by which the city sits. The latter is never formally identified in the film as Shijiazhuang but is clearly so.
CREDITS
No presentation or production company credited.
Script: He Zheng. Photography: Hou Chenyu. Editing: Tao Lihai, Wei Jialan. Music: Sun Hao. Art direction: Liu Yongheng, Wu Xianzheng. Costumes: Wang Jiao.
Cast: Wang Bo (Li Taihang), Gao Xingyue (Donghai), Li Weidong (Li, policeman, Li Taihang’s father), Chen Xinjie (Lin Meng), Wang Wenbo, Yang Hongfeng (policemen), Liu Yongcheng (prisoner), Li Zikai (thief), He Yongzhao (bus passenger), Li Jize (boy in bus), Lin Hong (KTV woman), Wang Shuo (Bao, money-lender), Yang Wenpeng, Wu Xianzheng (gangsters), Liu Sifu (old policeman), He Zheng (drug dealer), An Di (gang leader), Li Xuyang, Da Hai (car drivers), Wang Zhiling (church warden).
Premiere: First Film Festival (Competition), Xining, China, 23 Jul 2018.
Release: China, tba.