My Best Friends
我的狐朋狗友
China, 2016, colour, 2.35:1, 90 mins.
Director: Huo Meng 霍猛.
Rating: 7/10.
Likeable light comedy centred on four friends from schooldays avoids most of the genre’s cliches.
STORY
Dongguan town, Henan province, central China, autumn 1993. Four fast friends – Tang Mingjun (Heng Jianqiang), Wan Zhong (Jiao Shihao), Wang Haidong (Chen Erhao) and Liu Lichun (He Liangke) – steal coal off a moving train. They jokingly nickname themselves The Four Heavenly Kings 四大天王. Twenty years later, unmarried lothario Tang Mingjun (Tong Yue) is caught making love in a car with the girlfriend (Ying Yuan) of the town’s most feared gangster, Kun Shan (Liu Guancheng). Later, Kun Shan and his gang pay Tang Mingjun a visit, smashing up his car on the way. Tang Mingjun gives them a slip and hides out with the tubby Wang Haidong (Xiao Ming), who has a bossy wife (Dai Jiang) who’s always accusing him of being lazy and impotent. The Missus’ Beloved Car 老婆的爱车. The two borrow his wife’s car to pick up their other pals, married Liu Lichun (Mao Xin) and divorced Wan Zhong (Wang Jingchun), in order to confront Kun Shan together. Wan Zhong, a teacher who’s turned to the bottle since being abandoned by his wife for another man, refuses to go with them. When the three meet Kun Shan, the latter demands Tang Mingjun signs over his flat as recompense for the loss of face. Only after the three has left does Kun Shan see Tang Mingjun has written “fuck you” on the contract. As the gangsters chase them by car, Wan Zhong suddenly appears, allowing his friends to escape. Wang Haidong’s wife calls to find out what’s happened to her beloved car; while they’re talking, a young woman (Zhang Yang) drives into their rear. She’s apologetic and offers to pay for the damage; later, while all five are having dinner, Wang Haidong’s wife arrives and starts screaming at him. For the first time in his life, Wang Haidong shouts back, and his wife shuts up. (Back in 1993, the four boys spied on a meeting between Kun Shan, just out of jail for violent assault, and his best friend Chai [Zhu Jinke] and Chai’s girlfriend Li Sumei [Li Junyi], who teaches at the boys’ school. Kun Shan was furious at Chai for “stealing” Li Sumei while he was in prison, though she said she fell for Chai first.) The Never-Fading Li Sumei 永不凋谢的李素梅. Kun Shan calls Tang Mingjun and gives him three days to show up at his club, or else. Wan Zhong recommends they visit Chai, who’s been a pig farmer in the countryside for the past two decades after splitting with Kun Shan. Chai just about remembers the four and invites them to stay for dinner with him and Li Sumei; that evening, Tang Mingjun remembers how much he fancied her at school. Next morning, Chai has already left in Wang Haidong’s wife’s car to meet Kun Shan at his club, and manages to convince him to go easy on Tang Mingjun. Kun Shan decides to travel back with Chai in order to see Li Sumei again, though they both get in a fight at a garage when the car runs out of petrol. En route they hear the four friends are already at Kun Shan’s club, so turn back to Dongguan. (Back in 1993, Wan Zhong’s younger brother, Wan Bo [Zhang Junyi], drowned in the river when Wan Zhong left him on his own. His father always blamed him for the accident.) The Four Heavenly Kings: The Forgotten Story 四大天王 被遗忘的故事. (Just after Wan Zhong suggested they should visit Chai, they had all gone drinking with the young woman from the car accident, ended up singing in a bar, and later passed out, drunk. Next day Wan Zhong had picked up his young son Ningning [Chai Ziheng] from his ex-wife [Zhou Yuanyuan] to take him to stay with his grandmother. The boy was initially hostile to Wan Zhong but things changed during the subsequent 24 hours.)
REVIEW
The Chinese title of My Best Friends 我的狐朋狗友 roughly means “My Gang of Scoundrels”, and that gives a pretty good idea of both the tone and the content of this likeable light comedy about four childhood pals. Yoyo-ing between schoolboy days (in 1993) and adult life (in 2013), it avoids being just a routine nostalgia item for Gen-80ers by having a slightly unconventional structure and an inventive script that avoids most of the genre’s cliches. This debut feature by Henan-born writer-director Huo Meng 霍猛, a graduate of Beijing’s Communication University of China, slipped through the cracks at the time, with Huo only gaining (critical) attention with his very different second feature, Crossing the Border – Zhaoguan 过昭关 (2018), a simple yarn centred on an old man and his grandson. But in most respects Friends is a superior movie, and certainly more substantial.
Certified in early 2014 but only released in the beginning of 2016, it had attracted the attention of established director Zhang Yang 张扬 who offered to be creative producer 监制 for free. That was just as well, as Huo, 29 at the time of shooting, reportedly ended up bankrolling the film himself when the investors pulled out at the last minute. Like Crossing the Border – Zhaoguan, it’s set and shot in his native county of Taikang, in Zhoukou municipality, eastern Henan province, though the location might just as well be anywhere. A local-dialect version is also reported to exist.
Accompanied by a jokey riff on the opening of Mahler’s Third Symphony, the story starts in 1993 with the pals – who dub themselves The Four Heavenly Kings 四大天王 – stealing some coal from a moving train. Though the film often flashbacks to the same era, most is set 20 years later when the four are either married or divorced. The exception is serial womaniser Tang Mingjun, who’s caught canoodling with the local gangster’s woman and generates most of the subsequent plot as he goes on the run with his pals.
As the film bounces along from one incident to another, the characters are also filled out by flashbacks to 1993, but generally not in a strictly episodic way. Similarly, jokey intertitles occasionally pop up, but not in obvious places: The Missus’ Beloved Car 老婆的爱车 when the vehicle, which has been borrowed by the friends from a bossy wife, gets into a scrape, and The Never-Fading Li Sumei 永不凋谢的李素梅 when Tang Mingjun re-meets a teacher he had the hots for at school. Huo’s screenplay has an admirably free-flowing structure, and even ends with a section that’s out of continuity.
Characters are cut from a familiar buddy-genre cloth but given a fresh feel by the acript and casting. As the easy-going lothario Tang Mingjun, TV’s Tong Yue 佟悦 makes a genial lead, backed by Xiao Ming 肖明 as his tubby, hen-pecked friend. Though he looks too similar in both timeframes, Liu Guancheng 刘冠成 has a suitably commanding screen presence (and serio-comic tone) as the gangster on Tang Mingjun’s trail, while Zhu Jinke 朱晋科 brings a genial coolness to his role as his former associate-turned-pig farmer. The one actor who looks out of place is top-billed Wang Jingchun 王景春, already an established character actor at the time of shooting (11 Flowers 我11, 2011; To Live and Die in Ordos 警察日记, 2013), who looks too old for the part of the gang’s alcoholic divorcee and seems to perform in a different key. The female cast make more impression than in most buddy movies, with Dai Jiang 戴江 terrific in early scenes as the tubby’s mouthy wife, Li Junyi 李君懿 (aka Jing Xingwen 井星文) quietly classy as the teacher whom Tang Mingjun tries to charm all over again, and Zhang Yang 张阳 notable as a young woman who briefly pals up with the gang after crashing into their car.
Widescreen photography by Cui Liang 崔亮 (Sad Fairy Tale 伤心童话, 2012) and Yi Cunyu 易存宇 is crisply lit and effortlessly composed, smoothly edited by Huo and Yang Yongkang 杨永康. In a film primarily driven by dialogue and character, music is sparingly used, apart from the Mahler-esque opening and closing, and a rousing song to buddyhood (reprised in its Cantonese original) near the end. The film’s production title was 四个好朋友 (“Four Good Friends”); box office was tiny, at only RMB740,000 – maybe because of a poster that made it look like a brawl movie – but still more than twice that of Huo’s subsequent Crossing the Border – Zhaoguan.
CREDITS
Presented by Shenzhen Gold Coast Industry (CN), Red Pole (Beijing) Culture Communication (CN). Produced by Red Pole (Beijing) Culture Communication (CN).
Script: Huo Meng. Photography: Cui Liang, Yi Cunyu. Editing: Huo Meng, Yang Yongkang. Music: Wan Jianguo. End-title song: Xiang Li. Art direction: Yu Shuyao. Costumes: Wang Qian. Sound: Li Tao, Wu Wei.
Cast: Wang Jingchun (Wan Zhong), Tong Yue (Tang Mingjun), Mao Xin (Liu Lichun), Xiao Ming (Wang Haidong), Liu Guancheng (Kun Shan), Li Junyi (Li Sumei), Dai Jiang (Sun Juan, Wang Haidong’s wife), Zhu Jinke (Chai), Zhou Yuanyuan (Wan Zhong’s ex-wife), Jiao Ni (Liu Lichun’s wife), Zhang Yang (young woman in car crash), Chai Ziheng (Ningning), Heng Jianqiang (young Tang Mingjun), Jiao Shihao (young Wan Zhong), He Liangke (young Liu Lichun), Chen Erhao (young Wang Haidong), Zhang Junyi (Wan Bo, Wan Zhong’s younger brother), Ying Yuan (Kun Shan’s girlfriend), Xue Shiju (policeman), Huo Meng (Xiaoqian, policemen), Bao Lingyu (Ningning’s grandmother), Tao Yang (petrol-station owner).
Release: China, 29 Jan 2016.