The Summer Is Gone

八月

China, 2016, b&w, 1.85:1, 106 mins.

Director: Zhang Dalei 张大磊.

Rating: 7/10.

Childhood reminiscence of the early 1990s is quietly affecting, if not especially original in content or style.

STORY

Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, northern China, early 1990s, August. Twelve-year-old Zhang Xiaolei (Kong Weiyi) whiles away the hot summer as his parents discuss getting him into middle school. His mother (Guo Yanyun) favours No. 3 Middle School. Meanwhile, his father (Zhang Chen), who works as an editor at Inner Mongolia Film Studio, spends as much time as possible with his son, registering him at the local outdoor swimming bath and going with him to the cinema. Zhang Xiaolei dreams about a girl opposite (Zhang Ya’nan) who plays the violin, and also looks up to the older San’er (Zhang Kun), a local layabout and bully. The family regularly visits the house of Zhang Xiaolei’s grandparents (Shi Linkuan, Shi Haiyu) where his aged great-grandmother (Zhang Xiuqing) is ill in bed. On one visit, Zhang Xiaolei’s mother gives some money to her brother Dagang (Fu Gang) who’s been laid off from a state-owned enterprise under the government’s economic reforms. Zhang Xiaolei’s father is due in the autumn to leave the film studio, which is being turned into a joint-stock company, and has been offered a lowly post, as a set runner, by an entrepreneurial film-maker, Fat Han (Du Xing). When Zhang Xiaolei’s marks aren’t good enough to get him into No. 3 Middle School, his parents try wining and dining to get him in. As the autumn rains arrive, Zhang Xiaolei’s father finally decides to accept Fat Han’s offer and prepares to leave for location filming. The father and all his work friends gather for a final meal as the country enters a new economic phase.

REVIEW

Zhang Dalei 张大磊, a film-maker in his mid-30s with several shorts behind him, makes a likeable feature debut with The Summer Is Gone 八月, a semi-autobiographical reminiscence of childhood in early 1990s China when the country was on the cusp of momentous change. Apart from the use of b&w, there’s nothing especially original about the film’s content (a blend of the “last summer” and “growing up” genres) or style (a poised, rather film-schooly approach). But there’s something about the film’s simplicity – and the way in which Zhang holds to it, instead of going a more poetic, romantic route – that makes the final result quite affecting.

The 1990s continue to be a wellspring for the so-called “’80s generation” 80后 that’s so influential in China’s media nowadays. But even more so than, say, the recent What’s in the Darkness 黑处有什么 (2015), set at the same time, Summer avoids any standard dramatic plot, being almost entirely composed of miniscule vignettes of family and everyday life. It will be interesting to see whether Zhang has a future as a writer-director beyond autobiography.

With an entirely non-professional cast, and a main character of a similar age and name as himself, Zhang makes little attempt to disguise the personal inspiration behind the film, which was even shot in his hometown of Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia province, in the north of China. But there’s pretty much zero local colour to the film: the shabby housing blocks, backstreet life and sense of summer languour could be in any town, anywhere in China, during a period when the country dragged itself from a moribund, centralised state economy into a more market-led one and the whole pace of life moved up a gear. As such, Summer is as much about the massive social changes that this wrought – breaking up communities and friendships held together by the “iron rice bowl” of jobs for life – as it is about its young hero, who, being only 12, undergoes rather few growing pains of his own, especially those beloved of film-makers.

Zhang Xiaolei is a quiet but rather pesky kid who’s just starting to get interested in the girl opposite but also idolises a local bully. On the brink of going to junior high, he looks like he could tip into either delinquency (those nunchaku round his neck) or something more creative (his father, a film editor, has instilled a love of cinema) when adolescence really hits. Zhang leaves that question open, focusing more on the family at this moment in time. The father has been laid off as the local film studio privatises, and the mother, a teacher, is the only one bringing in a salary. There are small but no great family tensions to drive the movie: the father occasionally drowns his frustrations in drink and the mother occasionally rebels, but in general it’s a loving and indulgent family, with most other problems (a dying great-grandmother, a hopeless uncle) relegated to the sidelines.

Under the film’s coolly objective visual style – largely fixed set-ups, immaculately composed and undramatically lit – the warmest relationship is between father and son, expressed not so much through words but through the time they share together – at a swimming pool, in a cinema, and so on. When the father leaves home for a location-shooting job, it’s a moving moment realised in the simplest way, as the boy looks after the departing bus. A subsequent scene, of a family photo without him, provides a poignant ending around the 80-minute mark, with the kid touchingly acknowledging his father’s absence. Unfortunately, in a rare misstep, Zhang needlessly prolongs the film for a further quarter-of-an-hour.

Performances all blend very naturally, and look of the time. As the young Zhang Xiaolei, Kong Weiyi 孔惟一 isn’t called on to say much, but has a quietly defiant curl to his lip that says much. Zhang Chen 张晨 is fine as the indulgent but rather weak father and Guo Yanyun 郭燕芸 especially good as his quietly strong mother. Other roles are bang-on in authenticity and variety, from delinquents through wannabe entrepreneurs to neighbourhood grannies.

Photography by Lv Songye 吕松野 – who also shot the b&w Tharlo ཐར་ལོ | 塔洛 (2015) by Pema Tseden 万玛才旦, one of the producers on Summer – has no strong lighting signature but conveys the oppressive heat of summer in subtle ways; similarly understated is the musical use of brief, filigree extracts from Debussy and Fauré when the boy is alone with nature. The exact year in which the film is set seems to be deliberately left vague, with Zhang evoking a general era of change rather than a specific year: a poster of rock singer Cui Jian 崔健 is in the family’s house, but people still sing traditional patriotic songs. Both the melodrama Unexpected Passion 遭遇激情 (1990) and light comedy Father & Son Open a Bar 爷儿俩开歌厅 (1992) show at the cinema, as too does the the US thriller The Fugitive (1993, but only released in China in late 1994). The film’s Chinese title simply means “August”.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Mailisi Film & TV Culture (CN), Beijing YoShow Culture Development (CN), Beijing Transcend Pictures (CN). Produced by Beijing Mailisi Film & TV Culture (CN), Beijing YoShow Culture Development (CN), Beijing Transcend Pictures (CN).

Script: Zhang Dalei. Photography: Lv Songye. Editing: Zhang Jianhua, Zhang Dalei. Art direction: Zhang Dalei, Lv Songye. Costume design: Han Guangren, Bai Ling. Sound: Ren Dong, Xu Chen, Wang Yanwei.

Cast: Kong Weiyi (Zhang Xiaolei), Zhang Chen (Zhang Chen, father), Guo Yanyun (Guo, mother), Shi Haiyu (grandmother), Shi Linkuan (grandfather), Zhang Xiuqing (great-grandmother), Fu Gang (Dagang, elder uncle), Guo Xu (his wife), Maomao (Maomao, their daughter), Zhao Hua (younger uncle), Huo Wei (Dongmei, his wife), Fu Yiran (Miaomiao, their daughter), Zhang Kun (San’er), Du Xing (Fat Han), Zhang Jiashen (Han Bing, his son), Tuya (his wife), Huo Wenlong (Old Yun), Hao Mengfu (singer), Gao Shuaihang (policeman), Li Shuangxi (hawker), Song Jie (cinema ticket-seller), Li Fude (San’er’s wife), Zhang Ya’nan (girl playing violin), Liu Yang (Liu, teacher).

Premiere: First Film Festival (Feature Film Competition), Xining, China, 23 Jul 2016.

Release: China, tba.