The Continent
后会无期
China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 104 mins.
Director: Han Han 韩寒.
Rating: 7/10.
Bad-boy writer Han Han debuts as a director with a good-looking road movie powered by a strong cast.
STORY
An island off the coast of China, a few years ago. Three friends live on a tiny island which is one of the farthest east in China: Hu Sheng (Gao Huayang), 24, who appears a little simple; Ma Haohan (Feng Shaofeng), whose father disappeared in a typhoon in 1994 when he was 10 and who later bummed around the world; and Jiang He (Chen Bolin), an introverted geography teacher. Most people have left the island for economic reasons and, when Jiang He is reassigned to a school in the far west of China, Ma Haohan has the idea of them driving him across country in a foreign car he’s spent all his savings on. En route they also plan to visit Zhou Mo (Chen Qiao’en), a girl who was Hu Sheng’s neighbour when younger, and Liu Yingying (Yuan Quan), a longtime penfriend of Ma Haohan whom he’s been waiting 18 years to meet. As a final act before leaving, Ma Haohan sets fire to his own home, but accidentally blows up Hu Sheng’s and Zhou Mo’s as well. After taking a boat to the mainland, they visit Zhou Mo, who is working as a stand-in at a film studio and dreams of becoming an actress and TV presenter. She’s friendly but offhand to them, wishing them well on their journey. She confesses to Ma Haohan that she once had a crush on him but has now got over it; she all but ignores Hu Sheng who has brought her flowers. The three stay overnight at a cheap hotel where Jiang He is visited by a prostitute, Su Mi (Wang Luodan); when the hotel is apparently raided by police, Jiang He and Ma Haohan escape with her but in their panic forget about Hu Sheng. Next day, at a petrol station, a man (Jia Zhangke) and two of Su Mi’s relatives (Bai Ke, Kong Lianshun) track them down, and they learn the truth about Su Mi’s circumstances. Ma Haohan and Jiang He drive off alone and later call the hotel to try to find Hu Sheng, but he’s disappeared. They next visit Liu Yingying who manages a billiard hall, and she tells Ma Haohan the truth about his father and her own feelings towards him. Ma Haohan and Jiang He keep driving westwards, and on the third day pick up a small dog and a lone traveller, Lv (Zhong Hanliang), from Guangdong. Ma Haohan takes a liking to Lv, whom he sees as a kindred free spirit. But as the three near the westernmost border to where Jiang has been reassigned, there are more suprises in store for him and Ma Haohan.
REVIEW
Two friends end up on a car trip from the far east to far west of China in The Continent 后会无期, a first feature by 31-year-old best-selling writer/bad-boy blogger/professional rally driver Han Han 韩寒 that, despite its arty leanings, has done rosy initial business in China on the strength of his name. Strongly cast and technically accomplished, The Continent is an interesting debut that’s always going to mean more to Mainland audiences than overseas ones but largely maintains interest with its dry humour and memorable performances, even when its philosophical content seems a bit thin for its obvious ambitions.
Like Guo Jingming 郭敬明, who’s enjoyed huge success with his own film versions of his popular Tiny Times 小时代 novels, Shanghai-born Han is a self-taught writer with no academic qualifications who’s seen as one of the main spokesman for the so-called “’80s generation” which has grown up in a reformist, booming, one-child-policy China with no direct experience of its revolutionary past – a kind of “Generation Y” more obsessed with itself than the country’s history and traditional cultures. Han’s writing is more directly questioning than Guo’s fashionista/celebrity approach; he’s more like a modern version of earlier bad-boy Wang Shuo 王朔 (who flourished during the 1990s) but without Wang’s interest in socially marginal characters.
It’s no surprise that the producing name on the can is Fang Li 方励, whose Beijing-based Laurel Films previously made indie festival favourites Summer Palace 颐和园 (2006), Lost in Beijing 苹果 (2007) and, most notably, Buddha Mountain 观音山 (2010), the last a loosely-knit but deceptively impressive drama centred on three drifter friends looking for family-style roots to replace their lack of blood ties in one-child-policy China. Aside from also having Taiwan actor Chen Bolin 陈柏霖 in the cast, The Continent is similarly themed, as three very different but rootless pals set out to drive across the country to deliver one of them to his new teaching post.
It’s a trip that’s avowedly metaphorical from the outset, starting on “one of China’s most easterly islands” where “the sun is first seen” to a place on the country’s “remote western border”. No locations are ever named – and most are unidentifiable wide-open spaces – as, true to the road-movie genre, it’s the journey and the people who are more important than the precise names of the places.
So rootless are the characters that, on the first day, two of them leave the third behind by accident when fleeing from an apparent police raid on their hotel. It’s a jarring moment that the film takes awhile to recover from – especially as the left-behind one was initially the central narrator – and seems wilfully maverick. As things turn out, he’s replaced by a bigger name (Hong Kong actor-singer Zhong Hanliang 钟汉良 [Wallace Chung]) whom the remaining duo pick up en route and who gives the film some energy and philosophical cohesion – notably in the central theme of trust and shared ideals between people when blood ties are lacking. The main character – easy rider Ma Haohan – finds his optimism tested and found wanting when he’s betrayed by a fellow free spirit, whereas the secondary character – geeky, career-defined teacher Jiang He – finds his own optimism in human nature intact.
Feng Shaofeng 冯绍峰, an actor who’s gradually becoming more and more impressive (White Vengeance 鸿门宴传奇, 2011; Painted Skin: The Resurrection 画皮II, 2012; Love Will Tear Us Apart 我想和你好好的, 2013), is suitably charismatic as Ma Haohan, a free spirit whose love of the open road is challenged by events. Chen, in long hair, nerdy glasses and goatee, comes into his own in the second half, and scales back his usual mumbling delivery. Zhong pretty much takes over the final third of the movie, in a wild performance as a king of the road who identifies with Voyager rockets roaming the universe. The only other male performance of consequence is a bizarre cameo by festival darling Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯 (as a slimebag gangster) that would seem annoyingly self-reflexive if it wasn’t so funny.
Suprisingly, however, for a masculine-centred movie, it’s three very focused performances by actresses that are the most memorable – all independent characters who don’t require any help from the men and each deliver bruises to their male egos. As a wannabe actress who politely kisses off her hometown admirers, Taiwan’s Chen Qiao’en 陈乔恩 (so good in the final segment of The Allure of Tears 倾城之泪, 2011) sets the female ball rolling in style, followed by Wang Luodan 王珞丹 (Caught in the Web 搜索, 2012; Lethal Hostage 边境风云, 2012) in the most extended role as a supposed prostitute who bewitches Jiang He. But it’s Yuan Quan 袁泉, in a briefer but more condensed role as Ma Haohan’s longtime penpal, who rises above the staginess of her dialogue to give the film its powerhouse female performance. Now in her late 30s, Yuan has hardly realised her early promise (A Love of Blueness 蓝色爱情, 2000; Pretty Big Feet 美丽的大脚, 2002) on film, but here she’s dynamite, albeit briefly.
It’s the combination of performances like these, plus the sly humour marbling the journey, that carries the script through its artier flourishes, which don’t have the depth that Han maybe thinks they have. The Continent is basically a very simple film – “a trip is just a trip, nothing more,” exclaims Ma Haohan near the end – and doesn’t bring anything new to a genre that’s already well established in Mainland cinema. But with the combination of the imposing widescreen photography by Liao Ni 廖拟 (Crossing the Mountain, 2009) and an attractive song track, it’s a trip that has few slack moments, even though it lacks the sheer emotional rapture that Buddha Mountain achieved at its best.
Much of the movie was actually shot in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southern Sichuan province, plus Inner Mongolia, way up in the north of China. Early scenes are actually in Zhejiang province, near Ningbo, and the group’s first stop, visiting an actress friend, is clearly shot in Shanghai Film Park, south of Shanghai. Though it’s not important in what is deliberately a journey of the imagination, five days to cross China by car from the far east to far west is something of a stretch.
The original Chinese title roughly means “We’ll Meet Again Some Time”, and is also the title of a 2011 song by Xu Liang 徐良 and Wang Sulong 汪苏泷.
CREDITS
Presented by Laurel Films (CN), Guomai Culture & Media (CN), Bona Film Group (CN). Produced by Laurel Films (CN).
Script: Han Han. Photography: Liao Ni. Editing: Xiao Yang. Music: Kobayashi Takeshi. Art direction: Liu Weixin, Li Jun. Costumes: Huang Yu’nan, Liu Jun. Sound: Guo Ming, Fu Kang, Huang Zheng. Visual effects: Lee Jeon-hyeong (4th Creative Party).
Cast: Feng Shaofeng (Ma Haohan), Chen Bolin (Jiang He), Zhong Hanliang [Wallace Chung] (Lv), Wang Luodan (Su Mi), Yuan Quan (Liu Yingying), Chen Qiao’en (Zhou Mo), Jia Zhangke (Su Mi’s Third Uncle), Gao Huayang (Hu Sheng), Bai Ke, Kong Lianshun (Su Mi’s relatives), Bai Luoli (Li), Wang Haoran (Haoran), Li Qian (studio actress), Tang Xike (hotel receptionist), Liu Haitao (Liu Yingying’s stepfather), Jiang Qinyun (girl), Li Xinxing (traffic policeman), Yueqiluosha, Jikeliubo (policemen).
Release: China, 24 Jul 2014.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 30 Jul 2014.)