Exit
回光奏鸣曲
Taiwan, 2014, colour, 16:9, 95 mins.
Director: Qian Xiang 钱翔.
Rating: 4/10.
Dramatically thin study of a middle-aged woman trapped in her own tiny universe.
STORY
Gaoxiong, southern Taiwan, the present day. Lingzi (Chen Xiangqi), 45, lives alone while her husband, Shun, is away working in Shanghai. Her daughter (Wen Zhenling) occasionally visits her but the two are not close. After missing her period again, and suffering from dizziness, Lingzi is told by a doctor that she’s hitting the menopause. With no social life and her husband not answering his phone, she fills her days working as a clothes-maker in a sweatshop and visiting her aged mother-in-law (Bai Minghua), who is in hospital awaiting a hip operation. Her brother-in-law (You Anshun), whom she sees at the hospital one day, tells her he’s just come back from Shanghai and Shun is okay; but Shun’s phone is still off whenever she tries to call him. After being made redundant by the owner of the sweatshop (Cai Mingxin), Lingzi works at home, and a friend who runs a dance club helps her find clients. In the hospital, a man who’s been blinded in both eyes (Dong Mingxiang) is admitted into the bed opposite her mother-in-law; with no one visiting him, she starts to help him out in small ways and one night washes his body while he’s asleep. At home she starts making a pretty dress for herself and finally ventures out one night to a restaurant. But when she sees her daughter there with her boyfriend (Ruan Cheng’en), she panics.
REVIEW
Following his TV feature Ranger 归•途 (2011), centred on an ageing ex-con drawn back into the violent world of gangsterdom, Taiwan d.p. Qian Xiang 钱翔 goes for another spare psychological study with Exit 回光奏鸣曲, this time focused on a middle-aged woman in the southern port city of Gaoxiong coping with life on her own while her husband is away working in the Mainland. Faced with the onset of menopause, a daughter who rarely visits, the loss of her job in a clothes-making sweatshop, and daily visits to her hospitalised mother-in-law, Lingzi forms a silent attachment to a patient in the same ward who’s been blinded in an accident and has no relatives to care for him. There’s enough material here for an atmospheric 30-minute short but, at three times that length, Qian’s second feature as a director, while rarely arty for its own sake, doesn’t reward the viewer’s patience with any special insights or involving drama.
Playing a woman of almost exactly her own age, actress Chen Xiangqi 陈湘琪, 44, who starred as the lead’s best friend in A Confucian Confusion 独立时代 (1994) and went on to act in a string of Cai Mingliang 蔡明亮 movies, certainly knows how to perform with a minimum of dialogue. As her character, Lingzi, goes about a daily routine of dress-making work, familial duty and the small obsessions that come from living alone (a flap of peeling wallpaper, noises next door, a sticky front-door lock), Chen draws a recognisable portrait of a woman trapped by circumstances in a tiny universe of her own. That theme, however, is established within the first 15 minutes; thereafter, the film adds little but decoration, first as she reaches out for physical contact to a comatose patient in her mother-in-law’s ward and second as she dresses up one night and tries to reassert her attractiveness in public.
With hardly any other performances longer than a few minutes, the film is entirely Chen’s and the director’s. Acting as his own d.p., with Xu Fanghao 许方豪 (Ranger) operating the handheld camera, Qian – who’s shot several notable Taiwan movies (Blue Gate Crossing 蓝色大门, 2002; 20 30 40, 2004; recent foodie comedy Zone Pro Site 总铺师, 2013) – shows a good eye for composition on an indie budget, with the segmented spaces of the hospital ward, Lingzi’s flat and its bleak exterior underlining her isolation. Editing by Teng Zhaoqiang 滕兆锵 (Ranger) is equally smooth, not over-doing the longueurs.
However, as a writer Qian is much less inventive: his script is thin-to-non-existent, creating a potentially interesting character but having no idea how to develop her predicament into some kind of dramatic fare. By the end, as Lingzi finally tries to escape her mental and emotional confinement, the viewer rightly feels cheated at not being allowed to know more about her. Just as there are several other characters who could also have been developed but are simply discarded, so the use of tango music (linked to a friend’s dance club) is also under-exploited.
The Chinese title means “Backlit Sonata”.
CREDITS
Presented by Gray Wolf International Film Production (TW), Chienn Hsiang [Qian Xiang] Studio (TW), Ko-Hiong-Lang (TW). Produced by Gray Wolf International Film Production (TW).
Script: Qian Xiang. Photography: Qian Xiang. Editing: Teng Zhaoqiang. Music: Lei Guangxia. Art direction: Cai Peiling. Costumes: Wang Guanyi. Sound: Bonas Huang, Hu Xusong.
Cast: Chen Xiangqi (Lingzi), Dong Mingxiang (Zhang Shijun, hospital patient), Bai Minghua (Lingzi’s mother-in-law), You Anshun (Lingzi’s brother-in-law), Huang Caiyi (Jiazhen), Wen Zhenling (Lingzi’s daughter), Cai Mingxin (clothes-company boss), Zeng Meizhen (female patient in next bed), Lin Yuyi (night-market boss), Ruan Cheng’en (daughter’s boyfriend), Lin Zhengsheng (Bin), Xu Huiqing.
Premiere: Hong Kong Film Festival (Young Taiwanese Cinema; Young Cinema Competition), 1 Apr 2014.
Release: Taiwan, 3 Oct 2014.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 10 Oct 2014.)