Mr. High Heels

高跟鞋先生

China, 2016, colour, 2.35:1, 93 mins.

Director: Lu Ke 陆可 [Lu Kexin 陆可欣].

Rating: 6/10.

China’s first cross-dressing rom-com is predictable, throwaway entertainment, and very mainstream.

STORY

Beijing, the present day. Hang Yuan (Du Jiang) works as a software engineer at a computer-games company and shares a flat with his best friend, Lin Sensen (Chen Xuedong), whose father owns the company. Hang Yuan’s childhood love Li Ruoxin (Xue Kaiqi), who went to Europe to study fashion design, is now back and working as a bridal-dress designer. Hoping he may finally get to date his ideal woman, Hang Yuan invites her to lunch but, before he can declare his love, she tells him she’s engaged to a wealthy Chinese man, Zhou Jun (Wang Zheng), whom she met in France. However, when Li Ruoxin discovers Zhou Jun is actually engaged – and to a customer, Meiqi (Yu Xintian), of the boutique she works at – she decides to give up on men and starts dating Sami (Li Yuan), her lesbian kendo teacher. Lin Sensen tells Hang Yuan that his only chance now is to compete for Li Ruoxin as a woman. He helps him to dress up as one and Hang Yuan manages to get into a lesbian club where Li Ruoxin and Sami have gone. Posing as Hang Wen, Hang Yuan’s long-lost twin sister from the US, Hang Yuan gets drunk with Li Ruoxin and ends up on her sofa. Lin Sensen sends Hang Yuan to Korean cross-dresser Jin Chuchu, aka Sister Jin (Wang Zulan), for coaching in how to behave as a woman, and Li Ruoxin and Hang Wen become BFFs, pushing out Sami and also limiting Hang Yuan’s time with her. Over a dinner, Li Ruoxin confides in Hang Wen that she’d always thought Hang Yuan and Lin Sensen were a gay couple. Hang Yuan finally realises why she’s always treated him as a platonic friend. He starts to get fed up playing a woman, but doesn’t know what his next step should be in wooing Li Ruoxin.

REVIEW

Running on totally predictable lines, China’s first cross-dressing rom-com is glossy, mainstream fare that’s guaranteed not to offend anyone. The name on the can is Lu Ke 陆可 (aka Lu Kexin 陆可欣), a Beijing-born film-maker in his mid-20s who studied directing at New York Film School, made his feature debut with horror film Run 绝录求生 (2012), and was one of the directors of the online sex-swap comedy She’s Adam 变身情人 (2015). But the guiding spirit behind Mr. High Heels 高跟鞋先生 seems to be writer-producer Jin Yimeng 金依萌 [Eva Jin], 40, whose own colourful, girly chickflicks (Sophie’s Revenge 非常完美, 2009; One Night Surprise 一夜惊善, 2013) it most closely resembles. Clearly aimed at a young female audience, but also designed not to be at all threatening to male viewers, the Valentine’s Day release took a respectable RMB130 million, almost three times the total of its direct competitor, the star-laden portmanteau movie Run for Love 奔爱 (2016).

Purportedly based on a true story, the la-la plot centres on a shy young software engineer, Hang Yuan, who finally decides to declare his feelings to the love of his life, Li Ruoxin – but then finds, first, she’s engaged and, second, after being two-timed by her fiance, she’s given up on men. When she starts dating her lesbian kendo teacher, Hang Yuan’s only option is to fight for her affections as a woman. To its credit, the script never even pretends any of this is connected to the real world, plunging the audience straight into a scene where Hang Yuan is already in drag and being coached in womanly wiles by a Korean cross-dresser called Sister Jin (Hong Kong actor-musician-TV host Wang Zulan 王祖蓝, way off the camp scale). By introducing the cross-dressing and a pantomime tone from the start, rather than laboriously working up to them, the film is free to fill in the backstory via a 20-minute flashback.

It’s a wise decision and leads the audience straight into a sequence where Hang Yuan tests out his disguise in a trendy lipstick-lesbian club that Li Ruoxin and her kendo teacher have gone to. It’s a tour de force for Du Jiang 杜江 – a 30-year-old actor who’s worked almost exclusively in TV – in balancing the double-act, and he does manage to mantain the pantomime tone while hinting at the conflicted character beneath the wig and makeup. The film’s underpinnings of traditional farce are even clearer later on, in a six-minute sequence set in an apartment where Du has to pretend to be Hang Yuan and his longlost twin sister Hang Wen at the same time.

What the script never works out is how Hang Yuan is going to revert back to himself after winning Li Ruoxin’s heart as a woman. But in practice the whole lesbian angle is a non-starter, anyway, and the screenplay veers off at the hour mark into a sub-plot around the wedding of Li Ruoxin’s ex-fiance. The film barely manages to cross the 90-minute finishing line, even with copious montage sequences, plot diversions, and end titles that last almost eight minutes, but is made watchable by the fresh performances and general lack of pretension. Underlining the whole semi-fantasy, wish-fulfilment tone, one sequence by a lake (supposedly just outside Beijing) appears to have been shot in California.

Other cast are OK. With the script giving her an entirely passive role as the hero’s amorata, Hong Kong actress-singer Xue Kaiqi 薛凯琪 [Fiona Sit] (Break Up Club 分手说爱你, 2010; Girls 闺蜜, 2014) isn’t called upon to do much more than keep a straight face as Du bounces around. China’s Chen Xuedong 陈学冬 (Tiny Times 小时代 series, 2013-15) pops in and out as Hang Yuan’s metrosexual best pal to no great effect, while Li Yuan 李媛 (the quarrelsome fellow-patient in Go Away Mr Tumor! 滚蛋吧！肿瘤君, 2015) just glowers on the sidelines as the heroine’s lesbian kendo teacher.

The film has some harmless fun with sexual stereotypes and seems to argue in favour of a modern multisexual/metrosexual world, though in very vague terms. Fulfilling its function as a Valentine’s Day movie, the end titles are decorated with vox-pops of couples joking about cross-dressing. A brief interview with Du – and his actress wife Huo Siyan 霍思燕, who has a fun cameo as a lesbian security guard – reassures the audience that he is only acting.

The writing credits are curious, with the screenplay attributed to a pseudonymous-sounding Korean, Gim Yeon-hwa 김연화 | 金莲花 – whose name in hanja means “Golden Lotus” – and the “Chinese screenplay” to Jin, Yang Zhe 杨哲 (co-writer of horror Bunshinsaba 3 笔仙3, 2014) and Xin Fei 辛菲, with “script advice” 责编 from Zhang Hongyi 张弘毅 (Taiwan-set crime comedy Double Trouble 宝岛双雄, 2012).

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Skylla Haute Culture (CN), Le Vision Pictures (Beijing) (CN). Produced by Beijing Skylla Haute Culture (CN), Junfan (Shanghai) Film & TV Culture Studios (CN).

Script: Gim Yeon-hwa. Chinese script: Jin Yimeng, Yang Zhe, Xin Fei. Script adviser: Zhang Hongyi. Photography: Liu Aidong. Editing: Du Yuan. Music: Liu Jia, Su Hongliang. Music supervision: Chen Junting. Art direction: Peng Weimin. Costume design: Hu Xiaona, Nalan Yingzi. Styling: Li Rui. Make-up: Xu Dan. Sound: Zhang Wen, Yang Liu, Zhang Da. Action: Li Runsheng. Special effects: Dong Mingxing. Visual effects: Wu Shu (Gorgeous Entertainment [Beijing]). Los Angeles location shooting: Wu Shan (direction), Han Liu (photography). Executive direction: Cao Gang, San Pin.

Cast: Du Jiang (Hang Yuan/Hang Wen), Xue Kaiqi [Fiona Sit] (Li Ruoxin), Chen Xuedong (Lin Sensen), Wang Zulan (Jin Chuchu/Sister Jin), Huo Siyan (security woman at lesbian club), Li Yuan (Sami), Xiao Xiao (chat-show host), Lu Yi (female Tianjin punk), Yu Xintian (Meiqi, Zhou Jun’s fiancee), Wang Zheng (Zhou Jun), Gao Yiqing (bridal-shop boss), Qi Han (wedding ceremony host), Yang Sen (taxi driver), Chen Yijing, Liu Mengmeng, Bai Qingyang, Chen Sicong, Wang Yue (kendo students), Lin Qi (bridal-shop staff), Yuan Bao (primary school Li Ruoxin), Chen Yaxi (junior high Li Ruoxin), Yang Zhiwen (senior high Li Ruoxin), Liu Ruogu (primary school Huang Yuan), Yuan Baobao (junior high Huang Yuan), Li Jiacheng (senior high Huang Yuan), Da Xiong (restaurant manager).

Release: China, 14 Feb 2016.