Underground Fragrance

地下•香

France/Hong Kong, 2015, colour, 1.85:1, 77 mins.

Director: Pengfei 鹏飞 [Song Pengfei 宋鹏飞].

Rating: 3/10.

Bloodless, pretentious study of two migrant workers trying to make it in Beijing.

STORY

Beijing, the present day. Yongle (Luo Wenjie), a migrant worker from southern China, collects second-hand furniture to re-sell. Xiaoyun (Ying Ze), also from outside Beijing, works as a pole-dancer in a bar while trying to find a more respectable job in property sales. Both live in a former underground bomb shelter that has been converted into cheap lodgings. When Yongle has an accident and is temporarily blinded, he’s driven around by Old Jin (Zhao Fuyu), who is hoping to move into a new block of flats being built by a lake. Old Jin and his wife (Li Xiaohui) are holding out for more than the RMB10 million they’ve been offered by a developer for their old family house and land in the suburbs of Beijing. In the meantime, Old Jin, who used to work in the building business, tries to raise the deposit on the new flat by selling a mechanical digger and borrowing from friends. Meanwhile, in the labyrinthine bunker in which they both have rooms, Xiaoyun helps Yongle to find his way around and takes a liking to him. Finally, the time comes for Yongle to take off the bandages over his eyes. And then by chance Xiaoyun spots him as a customer in the bar she pole-dances in.

REVIEW

Taiwan d.p. Zhou Shuhao 周书豪 is the only one to emerge with any real credit from Underground Fragrance 地下•香, a first feature by Mainland writer-director Song Pengfei 宋鹏飞 that centres on two migrant workers in Beijing who meet and bond in some cheap underground lodgings. Song, who credits himself as just “Pengfei” on the print, studied film for seven years in France and also worked as an assistant director to Taiwan-based Chinese Malaysian auteur Cai Mingliang 蔡明亮. Traces of Cai’s rarified visual style and love of non-communication can be seen in the underground scenes between the two leads and in their alienated, asexual attachment. Above ground, the film is more fragrant, with the saturated photography by Zhou (The Robbers 我的唐朝兄弟, 2009; The Piano in a Factory 钢的琴, 2010; Dearest 亲爱的, 2014) vividly conveying Beijing streetlife and bringing some haemoglobin to an otherwise bloodless and pretentious film.

The taciturn, elliptical script by Song and Swiss-born, Paris-based film-maker Isabelle Mayor tosses around half-formed themes like rampant property development, making it in the big city, and how everything in New China is for sale, but doesn’t even make it especially clear to general audiences that the two lead characters are out-of-towners. Certainly, it has little to do with the plot; and the situation of migrant workers (as well as all the other themes) has been dealt with much more substantially in other movies. An initial attempt is made to portray the community in the warren-like underground lodgings, but it soon fizzles out.

As played by two first-time actors – male model Luo Wenjie 罗文杰 and former production assistant Ying Ze 英泽, the latter also debuting as a producer – they’re an expressionless pair who are impossible to empathise with: he spends most of the film walking round with his eyes bandaged and she listlessly grinds away in a pole-dancing bar inbetween going to job interviews. A stronger emotional centre is provided by the parallel story of a retired construction worker trying to get increased compensation for the demolition of his family home in the suburbs. Veteran August First Film Studio actor Zhao Fuyu 赵福余 is well cast in the role of a proud, belligerent paterfamilias, though he’s hampered by the lack of a real script to give substance to his part. Song’s own mother, former Beijing Opera performer Li Xiaohui 李小惠, plays the old man’s wife and even performs briefly in a silly dinner sequence that’s meant to be ironic.

A largely chamber-classical score by Jean-Christophe Onno adds some emotion, at its best when complementing Chou’s exterior imagery. Heading the French side of the production is Taiwan-born, Paris-based Wang Cong 王琮 [Vincent Wang], who’s produced many of Cai’s films. [The film premiered at the Venice film festival as Underground Fragrance but was released in France four months later as Beijing Stories.]

CREDITS

Presented by House on Fire (FR), Mishka Productions (HK).

Script: Pengfei [Song Pengfei], Isabelle Mayor. Photography: Zhou Shuhao. Editing: Isabelle Mayor. Music: Jean-Christophe Onno. Art direction: Wang Zhaohui. Costumes: Wang Jiahui. Sound: Li Minna, Du Duzhi, Du Yiqing, Ferdinand Bouchara.

Cast: Ying Ze (Xiaoyun), Luo Wenjie (Yongle), Zhao Fuyu (Old Jin), Li Xiaohui (Old Jin’s wife).

Premiere: Venice Film Festival (Venice Days), 6 Sep 2015.

Release: France, 6 Jan 2016; Hong Kong, tba.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 9 Sep 2015.)