Sad Fairy Tale

伤心童话

China, 2012, colour, 2.35:1, 91 mins.

Director: Xu Zhengchao 徐正超.

Rating: 4/10.

Odd mixture of comedy, rom-com and melodrama is light but messy.

STORY

China, the present day, February. Yang Jia (Liu Shishi), an assistant at eight-year-old film production company Enlight Media, finds herself getting unwanted approaches from her boss, managing director Qin (Xu Zhengchao). Qin forces IT manager Liu Tong (Hu Xia), who has secretly loved Yang Jia for years, to clandestinely turn on the staff’s webcams so he can spy on them, especially Yang Jia; but Liu Tong rigs the system so Qin’s own webcam is also turned on for the staff to spy on him. Liu Tong is shopped to Qin by fellow employee Yin Zhe (Da Zuo), who also likes Yang Jia, and Liu Tong is sacked. Yang Jia sympathises with Liu Tong but he doesn’t declare his love for her. One day at work Yang Jia faints, and her best friend, work colleague Yue Ling (Xie Nan), tells Qin she’s been diagnosed with incurable “somatic muscular atrophy syndrome”. Yang Jia tells her friends that, when she was unconscious, she seemed to travel back in time to the Qing dynasty. Along with her friends, Liu Tong decides to help her realise her dreams, before she dies, of travelling back to Republican China (to meet heroes like writer Zhang Ailing and poet Xu Zhimo) and also to be remembered as a famous businesswoman.

REVIEW

Writer-director Xu Zhengchao 徐正超, who’s worked with veteran comic Zhao Benshan 赵本山 on TV dramas and scripted the black comedy A Simple Noodle Story 三枪拍案惊奇 (2009) for Zhang Yimou 张艺谋, comes up with a real oddity in his first feature film, Sad Fairy Tale 伤心童话. A mixture of rom-com, love melodrama and playful pranks, it starts as an office comedy centred on a winsome employee, Yang Jia, who’s harrassed by her horny boss; moves into a series of sketches as her workmates stage events to help her “realise her dreams” before dying of an incurable illness; and ends as a sad love story.

The charitable view is to regard the whole undertaking as a kind of fairy tale, though Zhao’s staging doesn’t go for an obvious fairy-tale look or feel. Seemingly set in Beijing, but with many exteriors shot down south in Guangdong province (which explains why the weather is so mild in February), the film is dominated by a larky, 20-minute episode in which Yang Jia’s friends somehow manage to stage a Republican-era event in a film studio, so she can meet past heroes like writer Zhang Ailing 张爱玲 [Eileen Chang] and poet Xu Zhimo 徐志摩, and then by a shorter segment supposedly set 100 years in the future. It’s all messy rather than truly spacey, though just about held together by the good-looking photography of Cui Liang 催亮, smooth editing supervised by Hong Kong’s experienced Zhang Jiahui 张嘉辉 [Cheung Ka-fai], and most of the performances.

In only her second movie, ballet student-turned-TV drama star Liu Shishi 刘诗诗 (The Next Magic 下一个奇迹, 2012) holds the screen and is suitably cute as Yang Jia, though it’s the supporting cast, like TV presenter Xie Nan 谢楠 as her best pal, who keep things lively. As the loverlorn admirer, baby-faced Hu Xia 胡夏, a Mainland-born singer popular in Taiwan, is simply sappy. The office scenes were shot at the Beijing HQ of the film’s financier, Enlight Media 光线传媒, which gives itself multiple plugs, and Xu himself takes a sizeable early role as Yang Jia’s leering boss. According to a front title, the film is based on true events in the life of one of Xu’s friends, Wang Xiaoyi 汪小一.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Enlight Pictures (CN). Produced by Beijing Enlight Pictures (CN).

Script: Xu Zhengchao. Photography: Cui Liang. Editing: Ding Yijue. Editing advice: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai], Liu Xiang. Music: Chen Yu, Chen Song. Title-song music: Xue Zhongming. Lyrics: Yi Jiayang. Vocals: Hu Xia. Art direction: Man Bo. Styling: Wang Bai. Sound: Niu Jun, He Yuan, Huang Zheng. Action: Li Zhijie.

Cast: Liu Shishi (Yang Jia), Hu Xia (Liu Tong), Xie Nan (Yue Ling), Da Zuo [Zuo Dajian] (Yin Zhe), Xu Zhengchao (Qin, company managing director), Yi Liqi (Fentiaozi, security guy), Yang Yue (MC), Fu Weng (cafe waiter), Zhang Zidong (Du), Liu Xin (cafe waitress), Zhao Jiayi (“Zhang Ailing”/”Eileen Chang”), Ju Hongyu (“Xu Zhimo”), Zhang Yiming (“Hu Lancheng”), Ye Qingyuan (cafe waitress), Wang Shuzhen (female neighbour), Liu Ziwei, Lv Zhongnan (migrant workers), Deng Lichao (Liu, police officer), Bian Jing (guide), Cao Weilun (man with headset), Wang Chantian (Wang, company head).

Release: China, 14 Sep 2012.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 3 Feb 2013.)