Being Mortal

来处是归途

China, 2020, colour, 1.85:1, 96 mins.

Director: Liu Ze 刘泽.

Rating: 5/10.

Everyday light drama centred on a daughter and her Alzheimer’s-riddled father is well-played but worthy.

STORY

Shanxi province, northern China, the present day. Xia Tian (Tang Xiaoran), 30, helps out her mother, Li Wenxiu (Li Kunmian), in looking after her father, Xia Jianguo (Zhang Hongjing), whose Alzheimer’s is getting worse. Her parents live in a block that is full of pensioners from a meat-processing plant, most of whom have already died. Xia Tian has just split up with her married lover, Li Yong (Yuan Zongxuan), who was also her boss, so she is looking for a new job closer to home and offers to move back in with her parents. At the wedding feast of her best friend, Xiang Hong (Jiao Qiyue), Xia Tian meets Qin Mu (Shi Xiaofei), an old classmate from senior high school. They visit their old school together, and later end up in bed. They both introduce the other to their parents, though Qin Mu’s embittered father (Shi Xu), a middling civil servant who retired due to an injury, is not very welcoming. Meanwhile, Xia Tian gets a new job, as a dancer with a traditional dance troupe. Xia Tian’s father catches acute pneumonia, leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome, and has to be hospitalised. When he eventually returns home, he’s confined to a wheelchair and is also incontinent, but Xia Tian’s mother still refuses to hire a carer or put him into a home, despite her elder daughter, Xia Hua (Wang Tan), offering to pay. After a difficult day looking after her father, Xia Tian tells Qin Mu to go home, as he can’t help anymore. Qin Mu doesn’t come back. And then one day, in despair, the father stabs himself in the neck and is rushed to hospital.

REVIEW

A light drama centred on a 30-year-old daughter and her Alzheimer’s-riddled father, Being Mortal 来处是归途 is well-played and with moving moments, though as a movie it’s worthy rather than anything more. Led by an unemotional performance from looker Tang Xiaoran 唐小然 (Parallel Forest 平行森林, 2021) as the daughter, this first feature after some shorts and documentaries by writer-director Liu Ze 刘泽, 38, bends over backwards to underline its ordinariness. After premiering in autumn 2020 at the Pingyao festival, in Liu’s native Shanxi province, it was commercially released in the Mainland just before CNY 2022, taking a microscopic RMB81,000.

The continual stress on the story’s “ordinary” qualities is both a help and a hindrance. On the one hand, the film manages to underline the everyday without ever becoming a de facto documentary or a dreary chronicle of the father’s downward journey – a tribute to the strong playing, especially by the central family trio of Tang, Zhang Hongjing 张鸿敬 as the rapidly declining father and Li Kunmian 李坤棉 as the tunnel-vision mother who refuses professional help. On the other hand, the occasional attempts by Liu and fellow scriptwriter Zhang Weiping 张卫平, a Shanxi writer/academic, to introduce fantasy elements seem inappropriate and jarring. These may derive from the source material – a short story by Shanxi writer Li Yanrong 李燕蓉 that was published in a 2019 collection of 10 stories entitled 昼颜 (literally, “Daytime Colours”, see cover, left) – but in Liu’s directing scheme they seem out of place. Now in her mid-40s, Li is best known for her 2012 collection of short stories and novellas, 那与那之间 (“Between That and That”).

Music is sparingly used, and always just for mood. Photography by Li Tang 李堂 is always carefully composed without being at all showy. The film’s Chinese title means “Where You Come From Is the Way Back”. The production title was 又一夏 (“Another Summer”, a pun on the lead’s family name Xia, which means “summer”).

CREDITS

Presented by Shanxi Huajin Tianxia Culture Media (CN). Produced by Shanxi Huajin Tianxia Culture Media (CN).

Script: Zhang Weiping, Liu Ze. Short story: Li Yanrong. Photography: Li Tang. Editing: Guo Hengqi. Music supervision: Xie Weirui. Art direction: Chang Kai. Styling: Zhang Ji. Sound: Jia Jianyuan. Executive direction: Xu Mingshan.

Cast: Tang Xiaoran (Xia Tian), Zhang Hongjing (Xia Jianguo, Xia Tian’s father), Li Kunmian (Li Wenxiu, Xia Tian’s mother), Shi Xiaofei (Qin Mu), Yuan Wenqian (Wang, undertaker), Shi Xu (Qin Mu’s father), Chen Weifen (Qin Mu’s mother), Wang Tan (Xia Hua, Xia Tian’s elder sister), Jiao Qiyue (Xiang Hong, Xia Tian’s best friend), Yuan Zongxuan (Li Yong, Xia Tian’s former boss/lover), Dai Jinliang (Ma Liang), Shi Zhenxin (Huazi), Yin Tengzhe (bridegroom), Guo Jiao (Chinese opera actress), Li Xiaohui (landlady), Li Yuanxiang (neighbour), Meng Chun (Mrs. Zhang), Wang Jun (Li), Bai He (Dawei), Liu Wenbo (Xia Tian’s brother-in-law), Wang Tao (himself), Ren Dawei (passer-by), Huang Hongjie (long-haired guy), Guo Hao (bald man), Yu Haidong (traffic policeman), Zang Hongwei, Liu Hongbin (doctors), Shan Shiyao (Shanbei, Xia Hua’s young daughter), Guo Qian (history teacher), Fan Yaxi (teenage Xia Tian), Wang Yuhao (teenage Qin Mu), Liu Yuxing (teenage Xiang Hong), Mao Jisheng (teenage Dawei), Li Yufan (teenage Ma Liang).

Premiere: Pingyao Film Festival (Made in Shanxi), 10 Oct 2020.

Release: China, 14 Jan 2022.