Run for Love
奔爱
China, 2016, colour, 2.35:1, 135 mins.
Directors: Zhang Yibai 张一白 (I), Guan Hu 管虎 (II), Zhang Meng 张猛 (III), Teng Huatao 滕华涛 (IV), Gao Qunshu 高群书 (V).
Rating: 6/10.
Variable collection of tales in exotic locations has the best at the beginning.
STORY
The present day. I: So Long My Love 再见我爱你. In Otaru, Hokkaido, northern Japan, in winter, Su Leqi (Zhang Ziyi) arrives from China and meets Feng Yujian (Peng Yuyan), an apprentice chef in a sushi bar. He’s been studying there six years and has two more years before he’s qualified. She’s come to Otaru because her ex-boyfriend always wrote about it in his letters to her. She’s only there for 36 hours, but Feng Yujian offers to show her around. II: Homeward Journey 归途. In Istanbul, in July 2014, tourists Tang Jing (Liang Jing) and her husband Zhou Hongyi (Zhang Yi) lose their five-year-old daughter Tongtong (Li Yiqing) in the Grand Bazaar when she wanders off with some local kids. Tang Jing is beside herself with worry and starts blaming her husband. III: Nothing Like Romance 无关风月. In Chicago, three years ago, Guan Yue (Wu Mochou) entered into a green-card marriage with a Chinese American, Lu Jie (Wang Qianyuan). Now she is dying, she forces Lu Jie to come with her on a drive along Route 66 to Los Angeles, a journey of almost 2,300 miles she’s always dreamed about. IV: Artificial Sunlight 人造阳光. In Rjukan, southern Norway, at the start of winter in late September, Lili (Chen Yanxi) arrives to take up a job as a nurse at an old people’s home. She’s been away from China for five years, following a painful break-up with a boyfriend. One day, a young local lawyer, Andrews (Sebastian Stiger), takes her out and shows her the scenery. One of Lili’s patients, Helen Andersen (Janny Hoff Brekke), says she’d just like to see the sun, which doesn’t penetrate the valley for six months during winter. Andrews is inspired to seek a solution. V: Stolen Heart 偷心. On Saipan, a remote, US-administered island in the Pacific Ocean near Guam, Ye Lan (Tong Liya), an actress in her early 30s from Hangzhou, China, is tormented by memories of an accident and surgery. Out driving one day, she meets by the sea a young woman, Bai Qiezi (Zhou Dongyu), who says she’s a huge fan of Ye Lan but also knows several secrets about her and her late husband, Lan Bo (Cao Weiyu).
REVIEW
The Mainland craze for romantic stories set in exotic foreign locations – reflecting China’s booming overseas tourism – gets a full work-out in Run for Love 奔爱, in which five middle-generation directors get to play in locations from the Pacific Ocean, across the US, to Norway and the Middle East. Like most portmanteau films, the quality of the episodes is very variable: here it’s a slow downward slide in quality, with the best at the beginning and the worst at the end. For a film that runs two-and-a-quarter hours, this raises the inevitable question of why the last story wasn’t left on the cutting room floor, thus reducing the whole undertaking to a more tolerable 110 minutes and saving a lot of embarrassment for those involved.
The five directors, aged from their early 40s to early 50s, represent a generation of Mainland film-makers that came to local prominence in the ’00s but are from a variety of backgrounds and not necessarily tarred with the international film-festival brush. The oldest, Zhang Yibai 张一白, 52, is hardly known outside China, and works just as much as a producer (on some of the country’s biggest hits) as a director (Spring Subway 开往春天的地铁, 2002; The Longest Night in Shanghai 夜。上海, 2007; Fleet of Time 匆匆那年, 2014). The youngest, Zhang Meng 张猛, 40, was a product of the festival circuit (The Piano in a Factory 钢的琴, 2010) but has since moved more mainstream, as has the second youngest, Teng Huatao 滕华涛, 43, who began with the arty One Hundred… 100个…… (2001) but has since gone mainstream (Love Is Not Blind 失恋33天, 2011). Of the others, Guan Hu 管虎, 47, had a considerable background in TV drama series and small films before being belatedly “discovered” internationally with the black comedy Cow 斗牛 (2009) and more recently Mr. Six 老炮儿 (2015), while Gao Qunshu 高群书, 49, has had a chequered career with crime movies that’s hovered between the mainstream (The Message 风声, 2009) and its fringes (Old Fish 千钧。一发, 2008; Beijing Blues 神探亨特张, 2012).
All of which is to say that the group is united more by its flexibility than by any film-making ethos, making Run for Love a collection with no common aesthetic or even theme (apart from a general optimism towards life/love). The opening story by Zhang Yibai – the most skilled at the short-story format (When Love Calls 真情来电, 2010; Eternal Moment 将爱情进行到底, 2011) – is a beautiful miniature, set in Hokkaido, that draws simpatico playing from China’s Zhang Ziyi 张子怡 and Taiwan’s Peng Yuyan 彭于晏 [Eddie Peng], both variable actors, and is capped by a moving twist. The second tale, a slim story about two Mainland tourists searching for their lost daughter in Istanbul, is given substance by Guan’s obvious curiosity in street life of the European-Asian metropolis.
In fact, each director handles the touristy requirements of his segment in different ways. For Zhang Yibai, the northern Japan town of Otaru is all about food (sushi) and landscape (snowy mountains), while for Guan Istanbul is all about its denizens and backstreets, a way of life poised between two cultures. These are hardly original takes on either location but they do give the stories a substance beyond their simple plots. The other episodes, though not as good, follow the same trend: Zhang Meng’s odyssey along the US’ Route 66 is all about Hollywood iconography (road movies; Bonnie and Clyde), while Teng’s Norway-set episode, the slimmest of all and actually based on a real development in Rjukan in 2013, is all about Old Europe and nature.
In the latter, Taiwan’s Chen Yanxi 陈妍希 [Michelle Chen] doesn’t get much chance to create a character apart from look soulful against the majestic mountain scenery; in the former, the two leads (Wang Qianyuan 王千源, Wu Mochou 吴莫愁) are barely sympathetic as they drive and spat their way across the US. In the first four stories, however, one can at least feel the film-makers’ personal interest in the locations and culture. In the final episode, set on the US-administered Pacific island Saipan, there’s no feeling of anything at all: Gao and regular writer Gu Xiaobai 顾小白 just seem to want to make a mini-psychodrama based on every noirish cliche in the book, plus some toe-curlingly awful dialogue for actresses Tong Liya 佟丽娅 and Zhou Dongyu 周冬雨.
Technical credits are generally top-drawer, with the widescreen photography of Otaru and Istanbul by Li Bingqiang 李炳强 (Fleet of Time) and Zhou Shuhao 周书豪 (Dearest 亲爱的, 2014; Only You 命中注定, 2015) being the standouts.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing YooLee Media (CN), Shannan Enlight Pictures (CN), Messenger (Beijing) Entertainment (CN), Huayi Brothers Media (CN). Produced by Messenger (Beijing) Entertainment (CN) (I, III, IV, V), Beijing Seventh Image Film & TV Media (CN) (II); Enjoy Film (III); Moya (Xiamen) Entertainment (V).
Script: Cui Sitan [Tristan Jian], Pan Yu (I); Guan Hu, Ge Rui (II); Liu Ya (III); Bao Jingjing (IV); Gu Xiaobai, Gao Qunshu (V). Story: Jiuyehui (V). Photography: Li Bingqiang (I); Zhou Shuhao (II); Sun Ming (III); Zhang Yu (IV); Liu Yin (V). Editing: Zhang Jia (I); Zhang Wen, Liu Lei (II); Tian Lei (III); Liu Lei (IV); Liu Shidong (V). Music: An Wei (I, IV); Tan Xuan (II); Hou Wenbo (III); Fan Gao (V). Music production: Mao Hui (III). Art direction: Hirai Atsuo (I); Zhong Cheng (II); Wang Shuo, Wang Yikai (III); Chen Yingde (IV); Xiao Haihang (V). Styling: Cao Weikang (I); Ai Wen, Zhang Rui (II); Xu Jianshu [Lawrence Xu] (IV); Shi Yan (V). Sound: An Wei (I); Dong Xu (II); Hyeo Jin-an (III); Wang Danrong (IV, overall), Wang Danning (V). Visual effects: Song Kai (III); Zhuang Yan (IV); Ding Yanlai (V).
Cast: I: Zhang Ziyi (Su Leqi), Peng Yuyan [Eddie Peng] (Feng Yujian), Watanabe Testu (sushi bar owner), Nakamura Kumi (landlady); II: Zhang Yi (Zhou Hongyi), Liang Jing (Tang Jing, his wife), Li Yiqing (Tongtong, their daughter), Alev Çelik (Igren), Ece Aydın (Zeynep), Arda Kalaycı (Mustafa), Caner Yasin Bulut (Ali); III: Wang Qianyuan (Lu Jie), Wu Mochou (Guan Yue), Wang Zichuan (Chinese American woman); IV: Chen Yanxi [Michelle Chen] (Lili), Sebastian Stiger (Andrews), Janny Hoff Brekke (Helen Andersen), Per Christian Ellefsen (old nurse), Sigmund Sæverud (Henrik Lund), Yang Jincheng (Lili’s ex-boyfriend), Tan Quan (Lili’s cousin), Huang Liqun, Wang Weidong, Liu Juan; V: Tong Liya (Ye Yiyi/Ye Lan), Zhou Dongyu (Bai Qiezi), Cao Weiyu (Lan Bo, Ye Yiyi’s husband).
Release: China, 14 Feb 2016.