Shut Down

关机

China, 2020, colour, 2.35:1, 88 mins.

Directors: Guo Haoming 郭昊明, Chen Xi 陈希.

Rating: 5/10.

Rom-com centred on a character’s mobile phone going dead is poorly structured and saves its best for last.

STORY

Guangzhou city, Guangdong province, southern China, Aug 2019. Liu Dawei (Liu Yue), assistant ticketing manager at Guangzhou Grand Theatre, has two concert tickets for his best friend An Ran (He Dujian), 30, but has been unable to reach her by phone since the previous afternoon. (Liu Dawei had been secretly enamoured of her since she stood up for him one day at primary school, and three years ago had been about to propose to her when she announced she’d found a boyfriend.) An Ran’s company, which insists that senior employees never turn off their mobile phones, has also been trying to contact her, after she left for Hong Kong on business the previous day. In Hong Kong, meanwhile, An Ran wakes up late after getting very drunk at a business party the previous evening and is unable to recharge her phone. In Guangzhou, Liu Dawei visits An Ran’s mother (Pan Jie), who also can’t reach her daughter; she gets An Le (Wen Chao), An Ran’s younger brother, to call An Ran’s boyfriend, Wu Zijie (Qu Shaoshi), and discovers the latter making love to another woman in his car. Furious at Wu Zijie’s betrayal of his sister, An Le tells Liu Dawei, who offers to talk to Wu Zijie. Meanwhile, Qian Lu – the woman in Wu Zijie’s car, and also An Ran’s assistant at work – tells Wu Zijie she’s pregnant and that she wants him to break up with An Ran; she also turns off his phone, which means Liu Dawei can’t contact him. Next day An Le says he spoke to An Ran two days earlier when she was on her way to Hong Kong; one of An Ran’s managers, Xiao (Zhang Songwen), confirms she’s in Hong Kong and that he asked her to get there by 17:00 to represent him in a meeting. Liu Dawei sends out a missing-person post which goes viral, and some petty crooks decide to play a joke on him by demanding RMB300,000 ransom for An Ran. (Wu Zijie had been pressurising An Ran to get married and have a family, but she had been resisting because of her career. Qian Lu had then made a play for Wu Zijie.) While An Ran takes the train back from Kong Kong, in Guangzhou An Le discovers the identity of Wu Zijie’s lover and things become very chaotic. Then An Ran, to everyone’s surprise, turns up at work – where she’s punished by a manager, Jin (Zhou Xiaobin), for ignoring company policy over mobile phones. An Ran immediately resigns and the ambitious Qian Lu takes over her job.

REVIEW

A rom-com centred on someone’s phone shutting down would seem timely in mobile-crazed China, but Shut Down 关机 isn’t it. For those inclined to stick around, the final half-hour delivers a likeable, if generic, romance but the rest of the movie is unbelievable from the start and too plot-heavy – and, like the black comedy Kill Mobile 来电狂响 (2018), doesn’t dare offer any real critique of the phone-dependent culture that’s at the centre of the story. Despite some bright leads, this first feature by Guangdong-based TV veteran Guo Haoming 郭昊明, 50, and TV/online-movie writer Chen Xi 陈希 hardly registered on release, with a microscopic RMB240,000.

The nut of the plot is the chaos that ensues when a Guangzhou company employee takes a business trip to Hong Kong and can’t find a charger for her mobile the next morning. The fact that a five-star Hong Kong hotel doesn’t have a phone charger, as well as the impossibility of remaining out of touch anywhere in urban China, is so improbable that it weakens the fabric of the whole script, as various parties (her boyfriend, her best friend, her family, her employers) panic over the next 48 hours, and her emotional and professional lives unravel behind her back. Especially in its first hour, the screenplay (by TV’s Gu Lei 顾蕾 and Zhu Zhanzhi 朱展陟) keeps moving by firing here and there in an episodic way; when it finally concentrates on the main relationship, between the ambitious exec and the childhood friend who’s always loved her, it’s far better, and almost a 30-minute mini-feature.

Better known on TV than the big screen, actress He Dujuan 何杜娟, 33, is okay as the 30-year-old heroine, as, ditto, is Liu Yue 刘岳, 35, as her devoted, bright-eyed BFF; they make a likeable couple but material like this needs more star power to overcome its weaknesses. Among the supports, Guangzhou TV presenter Wen Chao 温超 is lively as the heroine’s younger brother. Widescreen photography by Zhuang Guoting 庄国庭 (who coincidentally shot mobile-phone horror Nightmare Call 诡梦凶铃, 2016) is attractive; music by Malaysian songwriter-actress Luo Yishi 罗忆诗 [Yise Loo] is thoroughly generic. The film is peppered with cameos and a few lines of dialogue are in Cantonese.

CREDITS

Presented by Anqiao Film Industry (Guangzhou) (CN), Phoenix Metropolis Media (Guangzhou) (CN), Guangdong Pearl Film & TV Production (CN).

Script: Gu Lei, Zhu Zhanzhi. Photography: Zhuang Guoting. Editing: Sun Yiqun. Music: Luo Yishi [Yise Loo]. Art direction: Li Weizhong. Costumes: Han Xu. Sound: Liao Jianping. Action: Jiang Wei. Executive direction: Duan Lingrui.

Cast: He Dujuan (An Ran), Liu Yue (Liu Dawei), Qu Shaoshi (Wu Zijie), Liu Qing (Qian Lu), Wen Chao (An Le, An Ran’s younger brother), Zhou Xiaobin (Jin, manager), Pan Jie (An Ran’s mother), Ruan Xinghang (Zhao Xiang, lawyer), Zhang Jiawei (Ru, An Le’s wife), Meng Weiming (Meng, Liu Dawei’s boss), Zhang Songwen (Xiao, manager), Wang Shipeng (Peng, basketball trainer), Chen Xinjian [Philip Chan] (Chen, manager), Peng Xinzhi (Wang, psychologist), Wang Jingqi (young Liu Dawei), Feng Yixin (young An Ran).

Release: China, 12 Sep 2020.