Shuttle Life
分贝人生
Malaysia/China, 2017, colour, 16:9, 91 mins.
Director: Chen Shengji 陈胜吉 [Tan Seng Kiat].
Rating: 5/10.
Uninvolving portrait of a hard-up KL family is let down by a dramatically thin screenplay.
STORY
Kuala Lumpur, Pudu district, the present day. Zhong Ziqiang (Chen Zehui), 19, and his young sister Zhong Huishan (Chen Yanwen) live with their mentally-ill mother Wu Lijun (Zhang Aijia) in an old apartment block where the water has to be collected from a truck every day. The family struggles along, with Wu Lijun doing occasional seamstress work at home but too often not taking her medicine and relapsing into fits of depression and anger. The breadwinner is Zhong Ziqiang but he’s unemployed after leaving his job in a motorbike repair shop, from which he was stealing parts to sell. On Zhong Huishan’s sixth birthday, after having dinner at home with mother, Zhong Ziqiang takes his sister out and meets up with his two friends, petty criminals Baotou (Liu Jiehui) and Fei (Ye Chaoming), whose main source of income is stealing cars. While going home afterwards, their motorbike is hit by a car, which drives off without reporting the incident. Zhong Ziqiang ends up in hospital with light injuries but Zhong Huishan dies. The police bring his mother to the hospital. The next day, the mortuary won’t release Zhong Huishan’s body without her birth certificate. Looking for it at home, Zhong Ziqiang has to tie up his mother when she has a violent relapse and he has to go out for more of her medicine. Unable to find his sister’s birth certificate, Zhong Ziqiang is helped by Baotou and Fei, whose criminal friend Fenchang (Huang Jinghui) recommends a printer (Chen Peijiang) who can fake one. But the price of RM1,800 causes more problems for Zhong Ziqiang.
REVIEW
The stressed-out teenage son of a mentally-ill mother hits the brick wall of bureaucracy when he tries to claim his sister’s corpse in Shuttle Life 分贝人生, a first feature by Malaysian Chinese film-maker Chen Shengji 陈胜吉 [Tan Seng Kiat] that’s as aimless as its protagonist. Set in a formerly prosperous but now rundown district of Kuala Lumpur, the film seems to want to draw parallels between the protagonist’s life and the zombie state of the country but is fatally flawed by an undernourished screenplay by Chen and Liang Xiuhong 梁秀红 (comedy Lucky Bowl 聚宝盆续集, 2013) that lacks any kind of personal drama or involving interplay to sustain a feature-length movie.
The film’s apparently meaningless Chinese title (“Decibel Life”) is a play on the first two characters, 分 fēn and 贝 bèi (“decibel”): put the first on top of the second, as the film’s vertical main title does, and you get 贫 pín (“impoverished”, “needy”). But as a study of KL’s poor underbelly the film is as pointless as the wordgame, simply showing a family in a hand-to-mouth existence rather than shaping its condition into an involving drama. A few thrown-in scenes (some needy citzens complaining about politicians’ uselessness; an MP’s banquet that sidelines the protagonist and his pals) seem tacked on to the screenplay rather than an organic part, as do the references to bureaucracy and officialdom. Even translating 贫 as “deficient” still doesn’t get round the problem of the script’s lack of development. The English title, which points more towards “meaningless life”, shuttling from one thing to another, is more to the point; but the aimless protagonist lacks goals rather than opportunities, unable to hold down a job, falling in with petty criminals and letting his bottled-up anger (at his mother? at his absent father?) occasionally break out in violence.
Chen’s inability to develop his material in any meaningful way is all the more disappointing after his witty 14-minute short 32°C Fall in Love 32°C深夜KK (2013), about a guy in a gas mask who holds up an all-night mini-mart, which was focused and to the point. Even the look of Shuttle is bland by comparison: the photography (this time by Taiwan’s Chen Keqin 陈克勤, The Bold the Corrupt and the Beautiful, 2017) is utilitarian, to no point. Performances are mostly OK, with Taiwan veteran Zhang Aijia 张艾嘉 [Sylvia Chang] convincing as the mentally ill mother but given no chance to bring any pathos to the part.
However, in his first lead role, Malaysian singer-actor Chen Zehui 陈泽辉, 27, remains an enigma, far more than the colourful criminal pals played by Liu Jiehui 六界辉 and Ye Chaoming 叶朝明. The most affecting performance, if brief, comes from Chen Yanwen 陈彦雯 as the trusting baby sister he idolises. Malaysian actress-presenter Yan Wei’en 颜薇恩 (Taxi! Taxi! 德士当家, 2013), also makes a brief mark but her role as a family friend isn’t developed.
As in 32°C Fall in Love, the dialogue is in a mixture of Mandarin and Cantonese, with in this case some Malay also thrown in.
CREDITS
Presented by MM2 Entertainment (MY), More Entertainment (MY), Golden Wheel Trading (Shanghai) (CN), He Sheng Media Group (CN), Harmonics Studios (MY). Produced by More Entertainment (MY).
Script: Chen Shengji [Tan Seng Kiat], Liang Xiuhong. Photography: Chen Keqin. Editing: Chen Xiaodong. Music: Xin Rong’an. Art direction: Lin Jifeng. Styling: Huang Juqing. Sound: Du Duzhi, Jiang Lianzhen.
Cast: Chen Zehui (Zhong Ziqiang), Zhang Aijia [Sylvia Chang] (Wu Lijun), Chen Yanwen (Zhong Huishan), Yan Wei’en (Xiaochuan), Liu Jiehui (Baotou), Ye Chaoming (Fei), Huang Jinghui (Fenchang), Zhong Yufang (Auntie Mei), Zhang Shuifa (Mr. Tan), Huang Dewei (MP), Chen Shirong (MP’s wife), Zhuang Kebi (policeman), Wen Huiyin (policewoman), Chen Peijiang (printer), Chen Minwei (motorike repairman), Hong Zihan (Stella, woman in cake shop).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Asian New Talent Awards), 21 Jun 2017.
Release: Malaysia, 12 Oct 2017; China, tba.