The Fourth Wall
第四面墙
China, 2019, colour, 16:9/2.35:1, 95 mins.
Directors: Zhang Chong 张翀, Zhang Bo 张波.
Rating: 5/10.
Paranormal psychodrama is a two-hander with good performances but a script that doesn’t fully deliver.
STORY
A town in northern China, Chinese New Year’s Eve. Liu Lu (Liu Lu) leads a solo life looking after sika deer on a breeding farm, where she also lives. A visible scar on her left cheek hints at a traumatic event in her past. After feeding the animals as usual, she notices a gap in the farm’s wire fence; she patches it up but the head deer appears to have escaped. She informs the farm’s owner (Peng Juntong) when he comes round with an end-of-year bonus and bottle of wine for CNY. He says nothing like this has happened in 30 years and gets together a search party. While Liu Lu is making dinner, Ma Hai (Wang Ziyi), an old classmate from junior high school times, comes by with food to keep her company; she’s not very welcoming but lets him stay a while. He sees she’s troubled and urges her to reconnect with society. A successful factory owner, he says there will always be a place for her in his life. But when he suggests they go away together, and he even gives up his factory, she refuses. He says he just wants to help her, as he once protected her from some thugs at high school. As he leaves, he mentions he recently had a weird experience, and she asks him back to explain it. (A few years ago his head had seemed to be full of the memories of a parallel version of himself, intertwined with his own memories. They included a parallel version of Liu Lu, who worked in a shopping mall promoting holiday tours, dressed as an ethnic-minority dancer, but with no scar on her cheek. He had watched as she verbally attacked a shopper, her mother-in-law (Sun Meilun), of taking her young daughter Duoduo (Peng Yixin) away from her.) Liu Lu tells Ma Hai he just dreamed she was married and had had a child, but Ma Hai says he’s had the visions for years and medical checkup showed there was nothing wrong with him. The shopping mall vision was only this afternoon, which is why he’s come round to see her. (After watching her row with her mother-in-law, he had talked to her about a holiday in Madagascar that her employer was offering.) Liu Lu again says he dreamed the whole thing up, conflating his memories of her taking dance lessons and his own desire to visit Madagascar. (As she left work that evening, he’d introduced himself as Ma Hai, her old friend from junior high, and they had had dinner together. He said he’d been travelling during the intervening 20 years; she said she’d married, had a child, and divorced, but now wasn’t even allowed to see her child on New Year’s Eve. After dinner, they’d visited an abandoned theatre; outside was a poster for The Fourth Wall 第四面墙, a ballet in which she’d once starred. Breaking in, they’d sat on the stage and talk. He remembered the theatre as the place where the opening day of junior high had been held; she remembered it as a place where she’d danced in ballets for many years. In fact, she’d married the dance group’s director, though he’d been a wild guy. She had explained that the “fourth wall” was a theatrical term for the invisible wall between a stage and the audience. When she’d asked him why he’d suddenly come back to see her, he said he’d been roaming the country and, while on Hainan island, down south, he’d felt strangely alone and realised he had to come home. As she stands to leave, he tries to prevent her. In the struggle a gun falls out of his pocket and he knocks her down.) As Ma Hai tells Liu Liu the story, she starts bleeding from the same place on her head.
REVIEW
A paranormal psychodrama that starts impressively but doesn’t fully deliver on its promise, The Fourth Wall 第四面墙 is still a notable low-budget undertaking that at least tries to be something new in the genre. Written and directed by Zhang Chong 张翀 (a writer/producer who’s worked with directors Zhang Yang 张扬 and Guo Jingming 过郭敬明) and Beijing Film Academy graduate Zhang Bo 张波, it’s essentially a two-hander with fine playing by actress Liu Lu 刘陆 and actor Wang Ziyi 王紫逸 but increasingly hampered by complex plotting that ties itself up in knots. Premiered at the Shanghai festival in mid-2019, it was finally released in the Mainland at the end of 2021, taking an invisible RMB1.3 million.
Born in northeast China, Zhang Chong, 43, graduated from BFA and first worked on the production side in factual programmes for Phoenix TV. After starting as a writer for director Zhang Yang (Driverless 无人驾驶, 2010; Full Circle 飞越老人院, 2012), he founded Beijing Impact Pictures in 2014 and worked as a producer on the third and fourth Tiny Times 小时代 films; he’s also worked as writer or producer on several shorts, as well as directing one. Since The Fourth Wall he’s written and directed the fantasy drama Super Me 超级的我 (2020) and co-written the drama My Son 只要你过得比我好 (2021), the directing debut of character actor Cao Bingkun 曹炳坤. Neither made any mark at the box office.
The film prepares its ground carefully, opening with almost 10 minutes of documentary-like footage showing the isolated central character going about her daily work on a deer farm somewhere in northern China on New Year’s Eve. An ugly scar on her cheek appears to hint at some past trauma that may or may not be responsible for her choosing such a way of life. After being visited by her boss, and telling him a deer has escaped, she settles down to a solitary dinner which is suddenly interrupted by an old high-school friend whom she hasn’t seen for 20 years. He’s come with food and drink to “keep her company” – though she makes it clear she’s not looking for any. Thus begins an elaborate psychodrama which seems to initially centre on him but later returns to her. At its core is his revelation that he’s been plagued for a long time by visions of a parallel him and her who seem to have no connection with their real selves. Or do they?
The two Zhangs don’t rush things in the early going. It’s almost half-an-hour before the man starts telling his story to the woman, and getting on for an hour before the drama suddenly ramps up a notch. This gives the characters some depth before delving deeper into their psyches, but the final unravelling of the mystery seems rushed and not emerging naturally from the narrative. In addition, the closing, widescreen footage of Madagascar (a country that’s discussed earlier on as a place of the man’s dreams) comes across as simply show-offy, especially in such a modest production. Some viewers may still end up confused, as the explanation is far from clearly presented, despite being basically very simple.
These faults aside, the film still deserves a point for its fresh approach and the playing of the two leads, whose on-screen chemistry is considerable. Over the years Wang, 39, has proved a likeable supporting actor (Blind Detective 盲探, 2013; Horseplay 盗马记, 2014; Office 华丽上班族, 2015; Shock Wave 拆弹专家, 2017) with occasional lead roles (the lover in Mountain Cry 喊•山, 2015) that prove he can do more, and here he easily holds the screen as the over-eager but troubled classmate from the past, equally suggesting friendliness, weakness and menace. As the woman with her own demons, Liu, also 39, and for some reason playing a character with her own name, spends much of the early going with little dialogue and lots of blank looks; but with the appearance of her alter ego her range becomes clearer. A dance student-turned-theatre actress – somewhat like her fictional character – she was notable as the sole professional in the kind-of-documentary The Reunions 吉祥如意 (2020), and, like Wang, went on to a supporting role in My Son.
Technically the film is modest but okay, convincingly drawing life during a bleak northern winter and always giving the two leads plenty of room. The film’s title – a theatrical term that refers to the invisible wall between the stage and the audience – is not especially relevant to the plot, which is more about self-delusion than breaking any barriers between actor and viewer.
CREDITS
Presented by Hehe (Shanghai) Pictures (CN), Beijing Impact Pictures (CN).
Script: Zhang Chong, Zhang Bo, Qi Hao. Photography: Zhao Longlong, Mazloum Saba. Documentary photography: Ma Like. Editing: Han Xiaoling. Music: Liu Tao. Music supervision: Yu Fei. Art direction: Bian Siqiao. Sound: Chen Chen, Wang Gang. Executive direction: Dong Ji.
Cast: Liu Lu (Liu Lu), Wang Ziyi (Ma Hai), Guan Siwei (young Liu Lu), Shu Yetian (young Ma Hai), Peng Juntong (deer-farm boss), Tang Wei (Liu Lu’s father), Zhang Lijun (female factory worker), Yang Dongfeng (theatre caretaker), Jia Zhenzhen (Liu Lu’s female classmate), Zhao Haicheng (factory manager), Zhang Ziyi (travel saleswoman), Sun Meilun (Liu Lu’s mother-in-law), Peng Yixin (Duo duo, Liu Lu’s daughter).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Asian New Talent Awards), 18 Jun 2019.
Release: China, 10 Dec 2021.