Hidden Blade

无名

China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 128 mins.

Director: Cheng Er 程耳.

Rating: 9/10.

Cracking WW2 spy drama set among collaborationists in Japanese-controlled Shanghai is challenging but gripping entertainment.

STORY

Shanghai, the 1940s. He (Liang Chaowei), director of the city’s Political Security Department that is overseen by Japanese army officer Watanabe (Mori Hiroyuki) and loyal to the collaborationist government run by former Nationalist (KMT) government official Wang Jingwei, goes to a hotel to interview Zhang (Huang Lei), the local secretary of the Communist Party who wants to “change sides” and become a collaborator. As proof of his good faith, Zhang passes some confidential papers to the ever-smiling and courteous He. Sep 1938, eve of the fall of Guangzhou. A Japanese pilot, with his dog in the cockpit, makes a bombing run on Guangzhou city. Three years later, Shanghai. He, who survived the bombing of Guangzhou, arrives at his office, in the basement of which are mad snarling dogs and torture cells. He tells a captured KMT agent that he is loyal to the collaborationist government of former KMT official Wang Jingwei and doesn’t rate KMT leader Jiang Jieshi [Chiang Kai-shek] as a leader. Later, He has dinner with Watanabe and they discuss rumours that Germany will attack the Soviet Union. Afterwards, He passes a message to Communist Party courier Chen (Zhou Xun) in a box of pastries. News arrives that Germany invades the Soviet Union. A day before she is due to be executed, He interviews captured KMT agent Jiang (Jiang Shuying), who almost succeeded in assassinating Tang (Da Peng), a minister in the Wang Jingwei government and a cousin of He. Though her execution order has been signed by Wang Jingwei himself, He quietly lets her go free, and she leaves him a list of important Japanese in Shanghai. In the countryside, a group of Japanese soldiers drown some locals in a pit because a well’s water was contaminated by a dead body. 8 Dec 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor (three years and seven months before Japan’s surrender). Japan declares war on the US and UK, and Shanghai comes under the rule of the Chinese Expeditionary Army, a part of the Japanese army. 10 Nov 1944, President Wang Jingwei dies. He and Tang are despondant at the news. Tang says the KMT government in Chongqing has accepted his repentance and allowed him to open negotiations between the KMT and the Japanese. May 1945 (three months before Japan’s surrender). The group of Japanese soldiers in the countryside are gunned down in open marshland, and among the dead is a young Japanese prince. Watanabe takes bloody revenge on the killers but later admits to Ye (Wang Yibo), one of his loyal Chinese agents, that he’s running out of time. Prior to 1937, Ye was engaged to dancer and Communist agent Fang (Zhang Jingyi) but later switched sides to join the collaborationist government. After she reminds him their relationship is long over, he takes out his anger on some Japanese soldiers in the street. The same night Ye’s colleague at the Political Security Department, Wang (Wang Chuanjun), threatens to kill Fang, as he’s guessed the truth about Ye. When Ye reads in the paper of Fang’s bloody death in an alleyway, he realises Wang killed her. Watanabe tells Ye to check out the docks for anti-Japanese agents, but he’s spotted there by Zhang, who warns fellow Communist agent Chen. (For operational reasons, Zhang and Chen have been living together for five years. He’s fallen in love with her, though she reminds him she already has a husband.) Zhang calls the Political Security Department and says it has a traitor in its ranks. Watanabe instructs He to meet Zhang at a hotel, where he first interviews him and then shoots him dead. Meanwhile, Ye confronts Wang over the death of his ex-fiancee Fang; and He is told by his cousin Tang to run for his life. He runs into the arms of his wife, Chen. But Ye and another agent have been ordered by Watanabe to kill both of them. Later, Ye reports back that He is in his hands and Chen is dead. 15 Aug 1945, Japan’s surrender. He is released from the Political Security Department’s prison. Watanabe and Ye are under arrest by KMT troops. Hong Kong, 1946. Ye buys a coffee for a woman in a restaurant. Later, he goes to a temple, where he suddenly feels a hand on his shoulder.

REVIEW

Though he’s only directed a handful of features during the past quarter of a century, every new film from director-writer-editor Cheng Er 程耳, now 47, is already an event. His fourth feature, spy drama Hidden Blade 无名, came seven years after his previous outing, The Wasted Times 罗曼蒂克消亡史 (2016), an epic story of love and betrayal among crime lords and their women in Shanghai of the 1930s and 1940s that established him as one of the most consistently original talents in contemporary Mainland cinema. Hidden Blade is packed full of Cheng’s usual trademarks, with none of even the minor blemishes that affected Wasted Times: juggling with time and the audience’s perceptions, creating an almost abstract world within a very real one, and making the most of a top-flight cast with unexpected shafts of dry humour. Largely set in the same city and same period as Wasted Times, but entirely within the duplicitous world of counter-espionage rather than Shanghai’s more glamorous denizens, Hidden Blade was finally released as a CNY attraction in Jan 2023, coming third in the box-office stakes with RMB931 million.

Though the film’s take was some way behind those of Full River Red (RMB4.54 billion) and The Wandering Earth II 流浪地球2 (RMB4.02 billion), it was still Cheng’s biggest box office success by far, over seven times more than that of Wasted Times and a handsome amount for such a non-crowdpleaser. Cheng’s features – including his first two, the brain-teasing psychodrama Unfinished Girl 第三个人 (2007) and Yunnan-set crime rondo Lethal Hostage 边境风云 (2012) – have always skirted being pure art movies, and can be roughly classified as “challenging” entertainment. Categories and box office aside, and despite trading in the familiar genre of the WW2 Shanghai spy movie, Hidden Blade was unquestionably the most striking and original Chinese film of 2023, and Cheng’s best so far.

It’s also, like all Cheng’s features, a film you need to see at least twice to fully comprehend. The first 12 minutes are composed of apparently random shots and scenes that turn out to be from later (much later) in the picture, where they are fully explained by their context. Only after all that does the film really begin, with a caption announcing “Sep 1938, eve of the fall of Guangzhou” and a quirky scene set in a Japanese bomber, quickly followed by “Three years later, Shanghai”, as the main character, Political Security Department director He, arrives for work in his office above some horrendous torture cells in the basement.

Like the main character in the spy thriller Seven Killings 刀尖 (released later in 2023), He is Chinese but working for the puppet Reorganised National Government of the Republic of China, a regime installed by the Japanese under former KMT official Wang Jingwei. Brilliantly played with an impenetrable, ice-cool charm by Hong Kong veteran Liang Chaowei 梁朝伟 [Tony Leung Chiu-wai], He initially comes over as a deeply cynical collaborator, arresting and torturing KMT and Communist agents who are hostile to the Japanese and casually dismissing KMT leader Jiang Jieshi [Chiang Kai-shek] as not much of a leader. But after dining with his Japanese supervisor, the ambitious military officer Watanabe (Mori Hiroyuki 森博之), He passes a message to a female courier (Zhou Xun 周迅, in an extended guest role) inside a box of pastries, so the audience is primed that he’s not quite all he seems.

As the labyrinthine plot unfurls over the next five years, a small group of characters, whose real sympathies are not always clear, interact with each other, sometimes violently. There’s He’s two junior colleagues, Ye (Wang Yibo 王一博) and Wang (Wang Chuanjun 王传君), who seem utterly committed to a pro-Japanese line but are discreetly competitive with each other (humorously shown in a scene of them both blowing smoke rings during a cigarette break); the female courier and her Communist colleague Zhang (Huang Lei 黄磊), posing as her husband; a puppet-government minister (comic Da Peng 大鹏, barely recognisable in serious mode) who is He’s cousin; and a couple of female agents from various political sides (Jiang Shuying 江疏影, Zhang Jingyi 张婧仪). The film unrolls their relationships, meanings and identities in barely connected sequences that are like a series of tableaux, each framed with absolute precision and shot in pastelly colours by DPs Cai Tao 蔡涛 (12 Citizens 十二公民, 2014; The Looming Storm 暴雪将至, 2017) and Liao Ni 廖拟 (The Continent 后会无期, 2014; Chongqing Hot Pot 火锅英雄, 2016; Love Will Tear Us Apart 我要我们在一起, 2021; Home Coming 万里归途, 2022) that effectively convey a sense of period. Typically, Cheng never allows the viewer to know more than he wants, and is still springing surprises up to the last moment.

The pressure-cooker atmosphere, as the whole counter-espionage bureau is racked by suspicion and a growing sense of end-of-days as the war moves to its close, is excellently mirrored by Mori’s performance as the Japanese supervisor who’s actually quite a realist and has his own plans for later on. The extent to which he trusts his Chinese staff is always in doubt, though he appears not to doubt the loyalty of the ambitious young Ye (creepily portrayed by popular dancer-rapper-boybander Wang, One and Only 热烈, 2023). Physically, the pressure-cooker finally explodes an hour-and-a-half in, with a brutal, no-holds-barred fight in an apartment building between He and Ye that’s a real jaw-dropper.

Amid all the precise direction and strong cast, Liang, now in his early 60s, shows how he’s matured into one of Chinese cinema’s subtlest actors, commanding the stage with the minimum of effort. Zhou comes through strongly in her later scenes with a similar economy, and the whole thing is wrapped up in a notable score by Li Zhaohui 李朝晖 and Guo Sida 郭思达 that accounts for a large part of the film’s success, its deep, churning character often building foreboding and atmosphere in an operatic way.

The film’s Chinese title literally means “Nameless”, a fitting title for a film about undercover identities in which everyone is known by just a surname, all of which are very common (He, Zhang, Chen etc.). Even the end credits has just a roll of the actors’ names, with no character names attached. The film was shot in and around Shanghai in 115 days, from 27 Aug to 19 Dec 2021.

Between Wasted Times and Hidden Blade, Cheng shot Pseudo Idealist 不浪漫 (literally, “Not Romantic”), a documentary on Mainland arthouse darling Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯, featuring Jia and actors Zhou Xun, Deng Lun 邓伦 and Japan’s Asano Tadanobu 浅野忠信. A trailer was shown at the Pingyao film festival (which Jia then headed) in 2019, and the film was originally to have been released in May 2020, but has not been heard of since. Reportedly, Cheng was to have started shooting a new feature, Intercross 人鱼, starring Wang Yibo and Wang Chuanjun, in summer 2023.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Bona Culture & Media (CN), Hainan Cutting Edge Pictures (CN), China Film (CN), Huaxia Film Distribution (CN), Alibaba Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Bona Film Group (CN). Produced by Hainan Cutting Edge Pictures (CN).

Script: Cheng Er. Photography: Cai Tao, Liao Ni. Editing: Cheng Er. Music: Li Zhaohui, Guo Sida. Art direction: Sun Li. Art direction advice: Zhang Zhenyan. Costumes: Fan Minglai. Styling: Lv Fengshan, Zhang Shuping [William Chang] (for Liang Chaowei [Tony Leung Chiu-wai]. Sound: Wang Sheng, Wang Chong, Yang Zhaoyue. Action: Chen Chao, Zhang Xuefei. Special effects: Qiu Dawei. Visual effects: Wang Xiaowei. Executive director: Liu Yizhou.

Cast: Liang Chaowei [Tony Leung Chiu-wai] (He, director), Wang Yibo (Ye), Zhou Xun (Chen), Huang Lei (Zhang), Mori Hiroyuki (Watanabe), Da Peng (Tang, minister), Wang Chuanjun (Wang, captain), Jiang Shuying (Jiang), Zhang Jingyi (Fang), Zhou Shenghao, Dong Yi, Furukawa Takeshi, Peng Guang, Zhao Zuo, Gao Shuguang, Minowa Taishi, Kaneko Kotaku, Sasaki Tomohiro, Kimura Junketsu, Kawanoue Kazufumi, Wang Huajian, Yang Zhaoyue, Su Yang, Yao Xiangyu, Liu Junpeng, Liu Yizhou, Lu Zetian, Miura Kenichi, Li Xin, Wu Ying, Xu Jingying, Yu Zhiqing, Li Yongfei, Mao Jiming, Xue Kuan, Liu Xu, Han Shumei, Xia Zhiqing.

Release: China, 22 Jan 2023.