Hot Soup
热汤
China, 2020, colour, 2.35:1, 99 mins.
Director: Zhang Ming 章明.
Rating: 4/10.
Arty interweaving of four stories ends up looking precious and rather silly, and leaves the viewer no wiser.
STORY
Shanghai, the present day. Wealthy businesswoman Tangtang (Liu Wenyi) is trying to get pregnant by her American-Chinese live-in partner Qi Youcang (Bai Zixuan), an AI developer, who does not seem so keen on the idea. Young taxi driver Chen Huo (Zuo Yi) finds himself regularly picking up the same customer, Xiaozhen (Li Meng), who is conducting a survey of “urban happiness”, though she is not very responsive to his friendly overtures. PhD student Xiaohuang (Chen Duling), who is writing a thesis on the synergy between economic development and happiness in China, regularly visits her supervisor, Jin Kaiyuan (Zhao Yanguozhang), at an out-of-town spa, hoping he will quickly give her a recommendation letter to Princeton university in the US. Tu (Chen Shengli), a gangster-turned-nightclub owner who’s now in a wheelchair, is keen for Wawa (Song Fangyuan), the teenage daughter of his longtime businesswoman lover (Li Ying), to get married to the right man and have a family, though Wawa, who is working on a survey of individual happiness, is not so keen, despite having a boyfriend who’s just back from the US. Tangtang urges Qi Youcang to drink some special soup to improve his fertility, though he’s busy on a project and doesn’t take her demands seriously. Chen Huo tells Xiaozhen he also works as an “immigration consultant” and can help her with her dream of getting to the US. Jin Kaiyuan repeatedly critiques Xiaohuang’s thesis, though he realises that all she’s really interested in is getting his letter of recommendation as soon as possible. Tu just wants to retire to the Pacific island of Vanuatu, along with his lover and Wawa. Xiaozhen gradually warms to Chen Huo, and the latter admits he fell for her at first sight. After Jin Kaiyuan passes out in the spa’s swimming pool, he and Xiaohuang become closer. On Wawa’s birthday party Tu gives her a bank card with RMB1 million, so she can be independent in her decisions. And on their anniversary, during a party at home, Qi Youcang presents Tangtang with a surprise gift.
REVIEW
Following The Pluto Moment 冥王星时刻 (2018), a nebulous, inconsequential tale of a director with writer’s block, indie Mainland director Zhang Ming 章明 makes it two flops in a row with Hot Soup 热汤, an arty interweaving of four separate tales that ends up just looking precious and rather silly. Despite occasional moments, and a generally good cast, the film is sunk – as so often in Zhang’s career – by a script that has ambitions beyond its grasp and ends up as just a faux-intellectual game. After making his name on the festival circuit with the atmospheric In Expectation 巫山云雨 (1996, aka Stormclouds over Wushan), Chongqing-born Zhang, now 61, made a couple of over-arty failures (Weekend Plot 秘语十七小时, 2001; Before Born 结果, 2005) before bouncing back with Folk Songs Singing 郎在对门唱山歌 (2011) and China Affair 她们的名字叫红 (2013), and then slipping off the wagon again with Pluto. After an overseas festival premiere in 2020, it was finally released locally this autumn but managed only a miniscule RMB138,000, despite a semi-name cast.
Zhang’s script was co-written with Wu Ming 吴明 and Lv Xinyu 吕新雨 (two academics at Shanghai’s East China Normal University, the film’s co-producer), plus Gong Yuxi 龚竽溪 (co-author of Pluto), with writer-poet Zhu Wen 朱文 (In Expectation) credited with “script adaptation”. It certainly plays like an academic exercise and, if seen blind, is confusing in the early stages as the film cross-cuts between the four stories without any preparation and almost no backgrounding of the characters. (Several main characters, mostly female, are never even identified by name.) Thread one centres on a high-powered Shanghai businesswoman who’s trying to get pregnant in the most clinical way, and her live-in partner, a Chinese-American AI developer who doesn’t seem greatly interested. Thread two focuses on a taxi-driver and his regular customer, who only gradually warms to his advances. Thread three has an ambitious PhD student regularly visiting her supervisor at a hot spa where he has treatment for arthritis, while thread four revolves around a gangster-turned-bar owner, his longtime lover and her teenage daughter.
Until a ridiculously manufactured coda, the individual stories are not physically linked. But Zhang and his writers sprinkle commonalities between them: the wannabe mother, taxi passenger and PhD are all equally cold-blooded in the pursuit of their goals; each female character in the four stories is either analysing, researching or looking for “happiness” in some form or another; and various common articles pop up in various threads – a carton of free-range eggs, medicinal soup, a car-wheel pendant, a red swimsuit, and a bank card worth RMB1 million. The last could be MacGuffins, providing the illusion that the stories are linked – and hinting that the four female leads may just be separate aspects of the same single woman. But that concept hardly holds water, and at the end of the day all the devices are little more than intellectual games, with no meaning. After 90-odd minutes of shuffling between the various characters, the viewer ends up little the wiser about anything.
Too often the screenplay is just people talking at each other or striking attitudes, and most of the characters are hardly likeable: the PhD student and her prof talk mostly in abstract concepts, the taxi passenger is unfathomable and annoyingly self-centred, the story of the wannabe mother and her partner is anaemic (maybe deliberately, reflecting their lifestyle), and that of the gangster and his “family” lacks an emotional centre. Performances are often way better than the dialogue, especially by actor-director (Cool Young 正•青春, 2010) Zhao Yanguozhang 赵燕国彰 as the professor, the always interesting Li Meng 李梦 as the taxi passenger, Chen Shengli 陈胜利 as the ageing gangster, and Zuo Yi 左溢 as the taxi driver. In the highest profile female role, Chen Duling 陈都灵 (The Left Ear 左耳, 2015) is too blank-faced – as usual – as the ambitious PhD student, and no match for fellow-actor Zhao.
The star of the film is actually d.p. Wang Meng 王猛 (Zhang’s China Affair and Cherry Goddess 9号女神, 2014; River གཙང་པོ | 河, 2015), whose sharp, well-composed visuals mirror each thread’s emotional temperature. The film was shot in 2019 and passed for exhibition at the end of that year.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Mancao Studio (CN), Shanghai Viigoo Information Technology (CN), Beautifulpal (CN), Shaanxi Yidi Film & TV Culture (CN). Produced by Shanghai Mancao Studio (CN), School of Communication at East China Normal University (CN).
Script: Zhang Ming, Wu Ming, Lv Xinyu, Gong Yuxi. Script adaptation: Zhu Wen. Photography: Wang Meng. Editing: Li Jin. Music: Han Han. Art direction: Ding Jiancheng, Xu Benchen. Costumes: Li Ning. Styling: Liang Jingxia. Sound: Sun Xiaogang. Robot production: Guangdong Zhoushan Baijia Dagu Electronic Technology.
Cast: Chen Duling (Xiaohuang), Zhao Yanguozhang (Jin Kaiyuan), Bai Zixuan [Tom Price] (Qi Youcang), Liu Wenyi (Tangtang), Li Meng (Xiaozhen), Chen Shengli (Tu), Zuo Yi (Chen Huo), Song Fangyuan (Wawa/Baby), Li Siqi (Jin Kaiyuan’s nurse), Paipai (voice of robot), Li Ying (Wawa’s mother), Fan Xuezheng (Zhou, Qi Youcang’s chairman), Zhang Yuyou (Xiaoyang, Qi Youcang’s colleague), Bi Shouyun (Zhou’s wife), Bao Chuan (Bao), Zhang Wenjun, Jin Zi, Zhu Wen, Lan Tianjingyun.
Premiere: Warsaw Film Festival (Competition), 15 Oct 2020.
Release: China, 16 Sep 2022.