Partners in Crime

共犯

Taiwan/Hong Kong, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 88 mins.

Director: Zhang Rongji 张荣吉.

Rating: 7/10.

Taiwan high-school mystery-drama has a refreshingly adult approach.

STORY

Taibei, the present day. On their way to Ming Ren High School one morning, three students come across the body of a fellow-student in an alley. The students, who are in the same year but didn’t previously know each other, are Huang Lihuai (Wu Jianhe), a bullied loner; Ye Yikai (Deng Yukai), a maverick bad boy; and Lin Yongqun (Zheng Kaiyuan), a quiet achiever. The corpse is that of Xia Weiqiao (Yao Aining), the lonely only child of a workaholic businesswoman (Li Lie); her death is thought to be suicide, jumping from her fifth-floor flat. Thrown together, the three boys start investigating the background of Xia Weiqiao, who was in the year above them, and even attend her funeral, pretending to be her friends. After they break into her flat one night to find some clues, Huang Lihuai shows them a note he’s found, written by Xia Wenqiao to another girl, Zhu Jingyi (Wen Zhenling), and saying, “It’s all your fault.” Surmising that Zhu Jingyi bullied Xia Weiqiao after the latter stole her boyfriend, the three boys decide to punish Zhu Jingyi for Xia Weiqiao’s death. Luring her to a nearby forest, they give her a shock and Zhu Jingyi runs off. Afterwards, however, as they fool around in a small lake, Huang Lihuai accidentally drowns. Scared, Lin Yongqun runs away; and later, Ye Yikai finds himself publicly branded as a “murderer” by Huang Lihuai’s vengeful younger sister, Huang Yongzhen (Hong Yuqing).

REVIEW

After his feature debut with the follow-your-dream crowdpleaser Touch of the Light 逆光飞翔 (2012), Taiwan director Zhang Rongji 张荣吉 successfully strikes out into more challenging territory with Partners in Crime 共犯, a high-school mystery-drama centred on the apparent suicide of a student. Any residual doubts left by Touch – a feel-good drama linking the lives of a blind pianist and a wannabe ballet dancer – are pretty much swept aside by Partners which, though treading on ground already colonised by Japanese and South Korean cinema, carves a strong Taiwan personality of its own as well as an adult approach to its subject-matter.

Apart from one early scene at a police station, the film is entirely set within the environs of the high school and the student’s activities nearby. Just as it doesn’t stray into the leads’ family lives, so it also doesn’t become mired in teenage classroom politics. The focus is kept tight on the three male leads as, after stumbling across a dead girl’s body in an alleyway, they set out to solve the mystery of her death themselves. Initially assumed to be a suicide as the result of bullying, the girl’s death becomes almost a MacGuffin in a broader story about the three boys – very different types who previously didn’t know each other but become tightly bound together by the aftermath of the tragedy.

Where a Japanese or South Korean treatment would have likely focused more on the bullying aspect, in Partners the subject is not the main course. The screenplay by writing/directing partnership Wu Nunu 乌奴奴 and Xia Pei’er 夏佩尔, aka Monica & Shaballe, who’ve worked together since 2003 – including the film Honey PuPu (2011) and TV dramas PS Man The Player 偷心大圣PS男 (2010) and Seven Friends 七个朋友 (2014) – is more about teenage guilt and revenge, and how pranks can easily go sour. After digging into the dead girl’s life, via social media and burgling her flat, the boys take revenge on the wrong person, with tragic consequences. The truth of the whole matter is finally revealed to be much more mundane than imagined.

The film’s structure, which becomes more elaborate as it progresses, doesn’t quite measure up to its ambitions, and at the end of the day the whole thing doesn’t have as much psychological depth as it promises. Despite several flashbacks to the dead girl’s life, she remains a vaguely drawn character, with no real explanation for her loneliness and social alienation, both of which have to be taken at face value. The main trio, however, are much more convincingly drawn, especially in the way teenage friendships are quickly formed and then start to fragment, with Wu Jianhe 巫建和, 21, especially good as the nerdy dark horse. The two girls who become involved – the apparent bully and the nerd’s younger sister – also emerge as personalities in their own right, with Wen Zhenling 温貞菱, 22, strong as the former.

Beyond Wu and Wen – who played the son’s best friend and the girl-gang leader in backstreets drama Together 甜•秘密 (2012) – the rest of the young cast, all newcomers, are fine, both individually and as part of the ensemble. They’re in no way overshadowed by a couple of name professionals in small roles: veteran actress-producer Li Lie 李烈 (Touch of the Light; Together) as the dead girl’s workaholic mother and actress Ke Jiayan 柯佳嬿 (the exchange student in Miao Miao 渺渺, 2008) as an acerbic student counsellor. The precision widescreen work by commercials director/d.p. Yu Guangwei 于光维, atmospheric score by Wen Zijie 温子捷 (Touch) and compact editing by Li Nianxiu 李念修 (Touch; Campus Confidential 爱情无全顺, 2013) maintain a simmering tension across the admirable running time of less than 90 minutes.

CREDITS

Presented by BenQ Entertainment (TW), Jet Tone Films (Taiwan)(TW), Double Edge Entertainment (TW), Fox International Channels (HK), Taipei Postproduction (TW), TC-1 Cultural Fund (TW), Arrow Film Production (TW), B’in Music International (TW). Produced by Double Edge Entertainment (TW), BenQ Entertainment (TW).

Script: Wu Nunu, Xia Pei’er [Monica & Shaballe]. Photography: Yu Guangwei. Editing: Li Nianxiu. Music: Wen Zijie. Art direction: Wu Ruoyun. Styling: Huang Yu’nan. Sound: Wu Bochun, Du Duzhi. Visual effects: Jian Zhengyi. Performance direction: Huang Caiyi.

Cast: Wu Jianhe (Huang Lihuai), Deng Yukai (Ye Yikai), Zheng Kaiyuan (Lin Yongqun), Yao Aining (Xia Weiqiao), Hong Yuqing (Huang Yongzhen, Huang Lihuai’s younger sister), Wen Zhenling (Zhu Jingyi), Liang Hequn (college head), Huang Denghui (policeman), Huang Caiyi (Huang Lihuai’s mother), Lie Lie (Xia Weiqiao’s mother), Ke Jiayan (college counsellor), Chen Qizhen (singer), Zhan Qingling (TV presenter).

Premiere: Taipei Film Festival (International New Talent Competition), 27 Jun 2014.

Release: Taiwan, 26 Sep 2014; Hong Kong, 5 Feb 2015.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 30 Oct 2014.)