The New Year’s Eve of Old Lee
过年好
China, 2016, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 105 mins.
Director: Gao Qunshu 高群书.
Associate director: Han Zhi 韩志.
Rating: 6/10.
Mainland CNY film is a mixed bag – a family drama jazzed up with some comedy and dozens of cameos.
STORY
Shimen, Liaoning province, northeast China, 7 Feb 2016, Chinese New Year’s Eve. Li (Zhao Benshan), who lives alone in his traditional northern courtyard house, plays majiang with all his old pals; but when they return home to their families for CNY, he’s left alone. Act 1. Li shops in the market, where he’s almost cheated by a chicken-seller (Liang Jing) with operatic ambitions. Meanwhile, in Beijing his daughter, Li Yangduo (San Ni), is on her way to the airport to pick up her own daughter, Zhu Li (Rayza), who’s studying in Los Angeles. En route, she’s phoned by her partner (Yu Feihong) in a drama company, who demands all her investment back. After picking up Zhu Li, Li Yangduo gets a call from Shen Qiang (Yu Hewei), a policeman friend in Shimen, that her father isn’t well; she cancels everything and decides to drive there, much to the displeasure of Zhu Li. Act 2. In Shimen, Zhu Li asks Xiaotian (Pan Binlong), a drinks seller in Dong Gaoliang Hutong just outside Li’s home, if she can use his internet. Meanwhile, Li Yangduo tries to convince her father to move to Beijing, as he is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Act 3. While Li is expertly preparing the evening meal, Li Yangduo has the idea of them creating an online, home-cooking company, but Li is not so convinced. Liu Dahai (Da Peng), an old classmate of Li Yangduo who’s in real estate, comes by with lavish presents for everyone. Another old schoolfriend, Mai Xiaomi (Mai Hongmei), who’s now working for Liu Dahai, also drops by. Act 4. Li Yangduo’s ex-husband, Zhu Heping (Lian Yiming), comes by but the two immediately start rowing. Only now does Li realise the pair are divorced. Act 5. Zhu Li introduces a Chinese American student friend, Peter (Yan Yalun), she’s invited over to experience a CNY get-together. Li serves dinner. When Zhu Li becomes nauseous, Peter casually announces she’s pregnant but he’s not the father. Li Yangduo is shocked and has a huge row with her daughter; the dinner breaks up, with Li silently drinking and only Xiaotian still eating. Eventually, Li wanders off on his own, triggering a desperate search of the city by friends and family to find him.
REVIEW
After a strong start during the ’00s with war-crimes drama Tokyo Trial 东京审判 (2006), wintry whodunit Old Fish 千钧。一发 (2008) and spy mystery The Message 风声 (2009), the career of Mainland director Gao Qunshu 高群书 has been more up and down during the current decade, with the terrific crime docu-drama Beijing Blues 神探亨特张 (2012) but also the scrappy desert Eastern Wind Blast 西风烈 (2010) and awful wannabe noir Crimes of Passion 一场风花雪月的事 (2013). After a three-year break from directing, Gao, now cresting 50, makes a surprising return with that endangered species, the Chinese New Year film. For a film-maker who’s largely been associated with crime dramas of the grittier kind, it’s a surprising genre to find him involved with, though he is on record as saying he didn’t want to make just a normal CNY comedy. In the event, The New Year’s Eve of Old Lee 过年好 is a mixed bag – a serious drama about a screwed-up northern family that’s been jazzed up with an avalanche of celebrity cameos and two upbeat endings to qualify as a New Year movie.
The script is based on a 2006 play by Taiwan writer-director Li Zongxi 李宗熹 called 守岁, a phrase meaning to stay up late to see in the New Year. In fact, the film bears little relation to Li’s play, which centred on three generations of women (grandmother, mother, daughter) in a single house. Instead, Old Lee centres on an ageing paterfamilias, living alone in an oldstyle courtyard house northeast of Beijing, who’s unexpectedly visited by his daughter and grand-daughter. In the early stages of Alzheimer’s, Li suffers occasional memory lapses but is still a more functioning human being than most of his relatives and friends: after various ups and downs, climaxed by a huge row between mother and daughter, Li wanders off at nighttime, prompting a manhunt by friends and relatives.
Though it’s thankfully free of melodrama, the script is pretty serious at its core, despite getting a mildly humorous spin by its experienced cast. Veteran comic Zhao Benshan 赵本山, 58 – the lead in Happy Times 幸福时光 (Zhang Yimou 张艺谋, 2000) and once the official face of Mainland TV’s CNY celebrations – gives a wry spin to the title character, who’s largely an observer but not above eruptions of emotion when called for. Zhao pairs seamlessly with the wonderful Yan Ni 闫妮 (Cow 斗牛, 2009; the mother in 11 Flowers 我11, 2011) as his divorced daughter who just wants him to come back with her to Beijing. There’s a wonderful complicity between the two actors that gives the film a solid base and, along with the clever performance of Beijing-born Kazakh actress Rayza 热依扎 (aka Riza Alimzhan Риза Алимжан) as the spoilt, horrendously self-centred granddaughter, there’s enough dysfunctionality on screen to power the main story.
After an awkwardly written start that tries to construct a backstory for Yan Ni’s character that’s then left unresolved, the film settles down once the action is based in the grandfather’s house and neighbourhood hutong. Though Gao keeps his camera and cutting mobile, there’s still a theatrical feel to the film, with arbitrary divisions into “acts” and with various characters (two classmates, an ex-husband, a Chinese American friend of the granddaughter) popping by, in what are basically extended cameos. But what keeps pulling away from the main drama – and marks it as a CNY film – are the dozens of name cameos, many of them blink-and-miss in the surrounding hutong. When the main drama stalls after a humongous row between mother and daughter, the cameos then arrive in an avalanche as everyone tries to find the missing grandfather via social media. And just when the film seems set to finish at the 96-minute mark, it then throws in a five-minute funky song’n’dance ensemble (directed by Zhou Xu 周旭) that’s jaw-droppingly out of place.
With the traditional Hong Kong CNY movie pretty much dead and buried, China has struggled to create a Mainland equivalent, partly because in a huge, diverse country with a fractured history it’s difficult to replicate the money-making, community spirit of the Hong Kong films. Mainland CNY films like Better and Better 越来越好之村晚 (2013) and Crazy New Year’s Eve 一路惊喜 (2015) went for a format of separate, geographically diverse stories with individual stars; in contrast, Old Lee goes for a single, northern-set story with dozens of cameos, and has an equally forced feel for different reasons. Most of these derive from the script – a traditional weakness in Gao’s films – which can’t make up its mind what genre it is and bolts on this and that in order to keep the audience distracted. (During the first half, for example, on-screen titles note the time and things that are propitious or not, but the idea withers away later on.)
Despite the film’s shifting tone, some of the cameos are very funny: the best and most extensive are by Liang Jing 梁静 (the crazed, mute wife in The Chef The Actor The Scoundrel 厨子戏子痞子, 2013) as a fast-talking, operatic chicken-seller and by comedian Da Peng 大鹏 (Jianbing Man 煎饼侠, 2015) as an oily real-estate tycoon. On the technical side, everything is in order, with the widescreen photography by Du Jie 杜杰 (Wind Blast) giving the film an attractive but authentically northern hardness. The Chinese title is simply the greeting “Happy New Year!”.
CREDITS
Presented by Rockview Pictures Entertainment (CN), Moya Entertainment (CN). Produced by Messenger (Beijing) Entertainment (CN), Shenzhen Startime Culture Media (CN).
Script: Lai Jin, Luo Eryang, Wu Jiuxi. Play: Li Zongxi. Photography: Du Jie. Editing: Yang Hongyu. Music: Ma Shangyou. Art direction: Yang Haoyu. Styling: Liu Hongman. Sound: Zhang Lei. Special effects: Ding Yanlai. Musicvideo direction: Zhou Xu. Musicvideo choreography: Yu Chengxian [Popping Woo]. Executive direction: Bai Hongbiao.
Cast: Zhao Benshan (Li), Yan Ni (Li Yangduo), Rayza (Zhu Li, Li Yangduo’s daughter), Da Peng [Dong Chengpeng] (Liu Dahai), Pan Binlong (Xiaotian, drinks seller), Yan Yalun (Peter), Zhang Yi (Li Ermao, Li’s son), Yu Hewei (Shen Qiang), Lian Yiming (Zhu Heping, Li Yangduo’s ex-husband), Mai Hongmei (Mai Xiaomi), Liang Jing (chicken seller in market), Zhou Dongyu (Dao Yazi/Sparrow, Zhu Li’s old friend), Chen Xiaoqing (himself), Yu Feihong (Li Yangduo’s business partner), Song Yanfei (classy woman), Ma Jingwu, Ma Dehua, Guan Zongxiang, Yu Daiqin (old majiang players), Cheng Taishen, Zhu Hongjia, Hu Ming (vegetable sellers in market), Zhang Yuxi (car-crash woman), Li Yu (Li’s neighbour), Tong Yao, Cheng Yuanyuan, Yu Yue (pretty women in hutong), Bai Hongbiao, Zhang Li, Bin Zi (Liu Dahai’s assistants), Zhou Chuchu (sad singing woman in hutong), Wen Zhang (“Gao Qunshu”, man cadging cigarettes in hutong), Tang Jingmei (model in hutong), Cao Weiyu (model’s friend), Huang Xiaolei (Sun Wukong, female rapper in hutong), Qi Xi, Liu Weiwei (passers-by in hutong), Wen Jing (YY’s VJ), Zhao Yiming (father in family), Yang Xu (mother in family), Zhao Ruifeng (son in family), Wang Hao, Fu Yang’en, Shao Kun, Yan Wei’er, Liang Yewen, Liu Junhong (female passengers in bus), Chen He (young girl’s father), Shen Tianran (young girl), Zhang Xinyi (streetcleaner), Shao Yijing (streetcleaner’s son), Sha Yi (TV station boss), Han Qing (JJ player), Yuan Hong (traveller), Liu Tianzuo (racing-car club driver), Cui Zige, Cheng Fangxu, Zheng Wendi, Li Lu, Chen Jialin (classy woman’s friends), Wang Bing (fireworks man), Gu Xuan (fireworks woman), Song Yang (husband), Li Dong’e (wife), Yao Chen, Guan Hu, Zhang Yibai, Gao Qunshu, Xu Wen, Gu Xaobai, Zhang Heng, Wang Xueyu, Wang You, Bai Jie, Hao Jun, Zheng Jiaxin, Huang Ke, Jing Gangshan, Chen Zhaohua, Sun Mian, Ma Shangyou, Liu Chun, Kong Ergou, Li Yang, Liu Jie, Gu Yibing (themselves, partygoers), Wang Xiaoli, Song Xiaobao, Xiaoshenyang, Liu Xiaoguang (themselves, in musicvideo), Huang Xiaoming, Duan Yihong, Li Yifeng, Sun Honglei, Xu Jinglei, Guo Tao, Jiang Wenli, Zhang Yixing, Chen Yanxi [Michelle Chen], Yang Mi, Hu Ge, Bao Bei’er, Wu Qilong, Ou Hao, Ma Ke, Hua Chenyu, Zheng Kai, Wei Chen, Xiaoxia, Kong Lianshun, Ma Xiaoxing, Wang Zhifei, Wen Wei, Zhang Mingmin, Murong Xiaoxiao, Zhou Xiao’ou, Lao Mao, Wang Rong, Jin Xin, Bai Kainan, Yu Qian, Yi Shu, Cheng Fangxu, Lu Yu (themselves, end-title greetings).
Release: China, 1 Feb 2016.