Caught in the Web

搜索

China, 2012, colour, 2.35:1, 121 mins.

Director: Chen Kaige 陈凯歌.

Rating: 9/10.

Chen Kaige’s superbly crafted drama on internet abuse has a cast at the top of its game.

STORY

A city in Zhejiang province, southern China, the present day, Monday. Ye Lanqiu (Gao Yuanyuan), personal assistant to tycoon Shen Liushu (Wang Xueqi), founder of elite executive training company Si-Atomic Education, is told she has signs of lymphatic cancer and must check into a hospital in seven days. Without medical insurance, the cost of her treatment will be prohibitive, and Ye Lanqiu fears she is going to die. Preoccupied on her way to work, she refuses to give up her seat on a public bus to an old man (Chang Baohua) when asked to, and a row breaks out in which Ye Lanqiu acts arrogantly. By chance, the event is videoed by Yang Jiaqi (Wang Luodan), an intern reporter on a news show at Dragon TV whose editor is Chen Ruoxi (Yao Chen), the girlfriend of Yang Jiaqi’s cousin, Yang Shoucheng (Zhao Youting). All three share a modest flat together. Chen Ruoxi decides to broadcast the material that day. Meanwhile, Yang Shoucheng, who works as a cameraman for a wedding planning company, quits his job after a row at a wedding over the fraudulent cost of the event. Arriving late at work, Ye Lanqiu asks Shen Liushu for emergency leave and breaks down in front of him. By chance, Shen Liushu’s wife, Mo Xiaoyu (Chen Hong), walks in on them and thinks they are having an affaire. Overnight, the TV broadcast goes viral, provoking an internet storm about the decline of modern manners. Next day, Ye Lanqiu tells Shen Liushu she needs RMB1 million to “save a friend”, and Shen Liushu transfers the money to her account. Meanwhile, Ye Lanqiu’s ambitious deputy, Tang Xiaohua (Chen Ran), discloses Ye Lanqiu’s identity on a discussion board and, just prior to a crucial meeting of Shen Liushu with a US businessman (David Peck) over a large contract, Mo Xiaoyu phones into the TV programme anonymously and accuses “the woman who wouldn’t give up her seat” as her husband’s lover. Ye Lanqiu, who has gone into hiding, records a public apology for use on Dragon TV. Afterwards, she offers the indebted Yang Shoucheng RMB60,000 if he will accompany her secretly for the next week. As Ye Lanqiu continues to be savaged on the internet, Chen Ruoxi decides to target Shen Liushu and his supposedly “ethical” company. Shen Liushu, who blames his wife for harming his company, decides to fight back, and sets an elaborate trap for Chen Ruoxi.

REVIEW

Slickly mounted, snappily written and with a quality cast at the top of its game, Caught in the Web 搜索 continues the belated revival of the career of veteran director Chen Kaige 陈凯歌 following his involving costume drama Sacrifice 赵氏孤儿 (2010). Chen has come late in the game to dealing with the social and ethical contradictions of life in modern-day China, but Web more than makes up for lost time. Densely plotted across its two hours’ running-time, the film starts as a black comedy on the destructive power of modern media (especially China’s internet discussion boards) but from its midway point gradually morphs into a complex web of love and ambition, both gained and lost. Despite a slight stumble in its closing stages, the multi-character drama ends on a strangely moving note during the final minutes: the audience is left with the feeling of having traversed a whole series of lives caught in a particular moment of time.

Amazingly, Web is only the third of Chen’s 15 features to be set in the present day, following the London-set mystery-thriller Killing Me Softly (2001) and the China-set weepie Together 和你在一起 (2002). It’s also not the first Mainland movie to deal with character assassination on the internet: the offbeat mystery Invisible Killer 无形杀 (2009), by Wang Jing 王竞, coincidentally also set in Zhejiang province, is the most notable earlier example. But Chen’s script, co-written with Tang Danian 唐大年 (Beijing Bastards 北京杂种, 1993, and Green Tea 绿茶, 2003, both by Zhang Yuan 张元, plus director of first-love drama Young and Clueless 青春期, 2006), goes way beyond its initial set-up. Here, the web and the media are just the instruments with which human flaws are exposed, not the guilty parties per se. Chen and Tang seem to be saying that their characters are simply victims waiting to be sacrificed, whatever the means and whatever the circumstances.

Teaming again with Sacrifice‘s versatile d.p. Yang Shu 杨述 (Peacock 孔雀, 2004; One Foot Off the Ground 鸡犬不宁, 2006; The Equation of Love and Death 李米的遭遇, 2008), Chen conjures up a varied look in which settings define their characters: the cramped, crowded flat of a news editor, the cool modern offices of a tycoon that’s full of mirrors, and the deluxe, Regency-style look of his and his wife’s home. On top of these foundations, and working for the first time with editor Li Dianshi 李点石 (Guns and Roses 黄金大劫案, 2012), Chen spins a fast-moving, complex opening in which the main characters’ lives are thrown into a vortex one Monday morning by a tiny event (an argument in a public bus) that would have been forgotten had not a rookie reporter videoed it.

From this small beginning there fans out a story that involves the wealthy tycoon, his money-loving wife, a woman who thinks she’s about to die, and the ambitious news editor, among others. The way in which the script juggles all its character threads on an equal level is just one of its pluses. But apart from the sheer structure of the film, the dialogue remains sharp and pithy, the tempo finds time for moments of introspection as well as snap-and-sizzle, and the cast never seem like puppets of the director, even though Web is very much a writers’ movie.

Veteran Wang Xueqi 王学圻, who first worked with Chen on the latter’s first feature, Yellow Earth 黄土地 (1984), and dominated Sacrifice as a peerless power-player, hits just the right note of black comedy as the “ethical” tycoon who manages his marriage with as much ruthlessness as his business. He’s well paired with Chen Hong 陈红 (director Chen Kaige’s actress-producer wife) as his lucre-loving spouse who finally rebels. In a savvy piece of casting, actress-comedienne Yao Chen 姚晨 – who also happens to be China’s current microblog queen – is especially believable as the news editor whose quiet zeal for a good story leads her to cross the line. As her unambitious boyfriend, Taiwan’s Zhao Youting 赵又廷 [Mark Chao] (Love 爱, 2012; First Time 第一次, 2012) redeems his wooden performamce in action-thriller Black & White Episode 1: The Dawn of Assault 痞子英雄首部曲  全面开战 (2012) with relaxed, likeable playing, pairing comfortably with Mainlander Gao Yuanyuan 高圆圆 (Romancing in Thin Air 高海拔之恋II, 2012). Among the others, China’s “It-Girl” Chen Ran 陈燃 is memorable in her first leading role, as the tycoon’s ditzy but sly secretary.

Though Gao’s character is the pin in the story’s grenade, it’s also the least clearly delineated and the hardest to get a grip on, deliberately shot and lit apart from the main cast. The script also dots its “i”s and crosses its “t”s too methodically in the final stages: one speech at the end by the intern reporter (kooky Wang Luodan 王珞丹) to her boss (Yao) seems especially redundant. With 5-10 minutes trimming, mostly in the latter stages, Web would be almost perfect; as it is, it’s a very very good movie in a very very good year so far for Mainland cinema.

Though it’s never identified, the city in which the film was shot is Ningbo, south of Shanghai. The Chinese title is the term for “search”, as in “search engine”.

CREDITS

Presented by New Classics Media (CN), 21 Century ShengKai Film (CN). Produced by 21 Century ShengKai Film (CN), Ningbo Radio & TV Group (CN).

Script: Chen Kaige, Tang Danian. Photography: Yang Shu. Editing: Li Dianshi. Music: Meng Ke, Ma Shangyou. Song: Li Jian. Production design: Gao Yiguang, Tu Nan. Art direction: Wang Xiaowei, Zhang Liang, Zhang Tao. Costume design: Sawataishi Kazuhiro. Sound: Li Wen, Gu Changning. Action: Gu Xuanzhao. Visual effects: Yan Ning. Computer effects: Yan Ning. Video photography: Chen Zhoufei. Executive director: Chen Feihong.

Cast: Gao Yuanyuan (Ye Lanqiu), Wang Xueqi (Shen Liushu), Chen Hong (Mo Xiaoyu, his wife), Yao Chen (Chen Ruoxi), Wang Luodan (Yang Jiaqi), Zhao Youting [Mark Chao] (Yang Shoucheng), Chen Ran (Tang Xiaohua, Shen Liushu’s assistant p.a.), Zhang Yi (Zhang Mu, Shen Liushu’s deputy), Chen Feihong (rubbish collector), Liu Yihao (Xiaocui, housekeeper), Yuan Weijie (doctor), Chang Baohua (old man on bus), Hong Ying (ticket seller on bus), Yu Ailei (thief), Zhou Mingshan (water seller), Ma Weifu (groom’s father), Zhang Dali (bride’s father), Fei Yang (wedding MC), Tian Wa (groom), Tang Ya (bride), Jiang Yongbo (wedding company boss), Zhao Ningyu (Lv, TV station head), Su Ni (Yi Yi, TV presenter), Xu Chengxian (Chinese-style expert), Tan Fei (western-style expert), David Peck (Stone), Wang Zhongxin [Kara Wang] (Miss Wang, Stone’s interpreter), Joe Anhalt (Stone’s colleague), Guo Wenxue (Cao, manager), Liu Guohua (watch shop manager),Yang Qing (Zhang Lingshuang), Xu Dexin (web expert), Huo Qing (Zhang, manager), Zhang Wenbai (Hu Zi, Chen Ruoxi’s colleague), Peng Xiuping (housekeeping company head), Tan Songyun (young housekeeper), Zhang Shuai.

Release: China, 6 Jul 2012.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 15 Jul 2012.)