North by Northeast
东北偏北
China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 103 mins.
Director: Zhang Bingjian 张秉坚.
Rating: 8/10.
Drole, expertly played period comedy about some villagers hunting a serial sex-offender.
STORY
Xiying village, northeast China, autumn 1978, two years after the end of the Cultural Revolution. The area has been plagued by sexual assaults on women at night, the latest victim being a widow, Xu. Local police captain Li Zhanshan (Ban Zan), along with his subordinates Xiaozhao (Chen Duan), Xiaoding (Zhang You) and Xiaoqiang (Guo Hui), stake out an area between the County Breeding Station and the railway line. One night they chase a half-naked man running from the room of Xiaocui (Ren Jinxuan), the adopted grand-daughter of the station’s head, Cai Bin (Li Bin), a veteran professor of Chinese medicine who has just been politically rehabilitated after beng sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. The suspect escapes, but Xiaocui, who is about to get married, claims she was not raped. Cai Bin brings in a former police dog and sets a trap, with a local, Banlagua (Liu Weibo), who wants to impress Li Zhanshan and join the police, dressed as a woman. However, the suspect escapes again. Li Zhanshan then learns that Xiaocui was, in fact, raped, so Li Zhanshan comes under increased pressure from his county superior to solve the case. When villager Hu Huaijun (Wu You) is arrested for peeking in the women’s showers, Xiaocui is summoned to identify him as the attacker; but she’s just attempted suicide after her fiance discovered she was raped and cancelled the wedding. Cai Bin suspects the attacker is using a night train to move around the area; she is also convinced Hu Huaijun is innocent. While Hu Huaijun is in custody, another woman, Caifeng (Zhan Hewen), is attacked but manages to fend off her assailant. Convinced that the attacker will return to get his revenge, Cai Bin sets another trap; but Li Zhanshan has called in people’s militias from other villages, and in the chaos the attacker again escapes.
REVIEW
A group of villagers, led by an incompetent police captain, try to track down a sex-offender in North by Northeast 东北偏北, a drole black comedy with a rich line-up of characters and a resonant setting. Taking place just after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and satirising attitudes and vocabulary of the time, the film manages to maintain a sense of the ridiculous without going overboard into pure pastiche or over-egging its rural types. Though it features no big-star names, it represents a powerful return to the limelight by veteran writer Yuan Daju 袁大举 and director/co-writer Zhang Bingjian 张秉坚.
Yuan, 59, previously worked with director Zhang Jiarui 章家瑞 on films like The Road 芳香之旅 and Red River 红河; Zhang Bingjian, 55, is renowned for his only other feature, the loony, borderline chaotic psychodrama Suffocation 窒息, featuring comic Ge You 葛优. It’s an amazing bounceback by a director who in the meantime has made only one documentary (Readymade 現成品, 2008, about Mao impersonators) and also works in visual arts (including the continuing exhibition Hall of Fame 名人堂, over 1,000 pink portraits of government officials convicted of corruption). In North, Zhang has dropped the visual and dramatic pyrotechnics that overwhelmed Suffocation in favour of solid characterisation and a script that’s all the stronger for its understatement.
Based on a true story that took place on the outskirts of Beijing, the movie is relocated to a village in northeast China “the second autumn after the end of the Cultural Revolution”, where someone is sexually molesting women and using a night train to avoid capture. In charge of the investigation is a police captain who claims he was an expert tracker in the army, and at the centre of the goings-on is the County Breeding Station run by a veteran professor of medicine who was sent down during the Cultural Revolution and is now about to return to the city following her political rehabilitation. Much of the dry humour stems from the play-off between these two characters, with the pompous captain way out of his depth and the professor quietly using her medical expertise (and common sense) to trap the unknown offender.
As one after another plan fails, due to sheer incompetence, the whodunit becomes less important than the gallery of players, all of whom are trying to adjust to the country’s new dawn but are hamstrung by longtime dogma and practices. The dialogue lightly sends up slogans and vocabulary from the recent past but in a natural way that’s also reflected in the excellent art direction by Dou Jun 窦军 (Suffocation) and the striking widescreen photography by Zhang Ji 张骥 that sketches land- and cloudscapes in a striking but unflashy way. (Locations were around Yichun, in Heilongjiang province, right up against the Russian border.) Similarly, the occasional music by He Miaoshu 何淼澍 remains gentle rather than dramatic.
Character actor Ban Zan 班赞, who works largely in theatre and TV but recently played the security officer in the excellent 12 Citizens 十二公民, likeably underplays the police captain’s arrogance and oafishness, making him a sympathetic figure who does finally (in a postscript set a year later) adjust to the changing times as well as come up trumps. His co-lead, octogenarian actress Li Bin 李滨 (Full Circle 飞越老人院), also from Beijing People’s Art Theatre 北京人民艺术剧院, gives a master-class in understated wisdom as the professor of medicine who can’t wait to get out of the pig-breeding backwater. They’re supported by solid playing from a cast of unknowns, including Ren Jinxuan 任津漩 as one of the victims, Zhao Xuemei 赵雪梅 as the captain’s tolerant girlfriend, and Wu You 吴优 as a Peeping Tom suspect.
A final, kind-of twist cleverly preserves the film’s satirical approach while maintaining the dignity of China’s police force. For the record, the locals call the unknown offender a liúmáng (流氓), a word that can mean anything from “hooligan” or “ruffian”, through “rogue” or “tramp”, to “pervert” or “sex offender”, and has changed meaning over time. During the Maoist period it also had a class/political conotation for anyone leading a disreputable life. The English subtitles on the version reviewed simply call him “liumang”.
CREDITS
Presented by Western Movie Group (CN), Heyi Pictures (CN), Artemple Films (CN), China Film (Shanghai) International Media (CN). Produced by Western Movie Group (CN), Heyi Pictures (CN), Artemple Films (CN), China Film (Shanghai) International Media (CN).
Script: Yuan Daju, Zhang Bingjian. Photography: Zhang Ji. Editing: Fang Lei, Sun Xiuheng. Music: He Miaoshu. Music supervision: Wang Changrui. Title song: Wang Feng. Vocal: Wang Feng. Art direction: Dou Jun. Costumes: Jiang Ping. Sound: Yan Peiguo, Wang Changrui. Visual effects: Gordon Lee, Peter Song (Naga Film). Executive direction: Hu Huidong.
Cast: Ban Zan (Li Zhanshan, police captain), Li Bin (Cai Bin), Lai Jiatong (Fan Dacheng, the veterinarian), Zhan Hewen (Caifeng), Liu Weibo (Banlagua/Half-Melon/Dude), Wu You (Hu Huaijun), Chen Duan (Xiaozhao, policewoman), Zhang You (Xiaoding, policeman), Guo Hui (Xiaoqiang, policeman), Ren Jinxuan (Xiaocui, Cai Bin’s adopted grand-daughter), Zhao Xuemei (Chunmiao, Li Zhanshan’s girlfriend).
Premiere: Tokyo Film Festival (Asian Future), 25 Oct 2014.
Release: China, 11 Dec 2015.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 14 Aug 2015.)