Wisdom Tooth
日光之下
China, 2019, colour, 1.85:1, 103 mins.
Director: Liang Ming 梁鸣.
Rating: 5/10.
Brother-sister drama set in northeast China starts impressively but totally unravels in the third act.
STORY
A coastal town in northeast China, Oct 1999. Gu Xi (Lv Xingchen) and her elder brother Gu Liang (Wu Xiaoliang) live in a shack on the outskirts of town. Effectively orphaned since young, they’ve grown up together and always been there for each other. He catches fish for sale; she works in a large coastal hotel called The Blessed. News of an offshore oil spill puts paid to Gu Liang’s one-man business; and then Gu Xi is told she can’t continue at work as there is a national census coming up and she doesn’t have a hukou (residence permit). Gu Liang says not to worry: even though winter is coming, they have enough to get by with their simple life. Gu Xi has been having toothache; her dentist says the problem is a wisdom tooth but it’s too early to remove it, so he prescribes painkillers. At a dinner with Gu Xi and their friend Dongzi (Wang Weishen), Gu Liang invites along Zhou Qingchang (Wang Jiajia), a girl he met in the street after bumping into her in a bathhouse one day. She is a music teacher just back from South Korea, where she went to study and her mother still lives. Her father (Chen Yongzhong) owns the nearby port and she gets Gu Liang a job there as a security officer. Meanwhile, Dongzi keeps trying to find shady side-jobs for himself and Gu Liang. After hearing from a co-worker that her hotel boss, Jiang Hao (Tao Hai), is a Christian, she approaches him outside his church one day and asks if she can keep her job. One evening Zhou Qingchang, saying Gu Liang is busy, picks up Gu Xi after work and takes her back to the family home, where Gu Xi stays overnight and the two bond like sisters. Next morning, when Gu Xi wakes up, Zhou Qingchang has already left for work; downstairs, Gu Xi sees the father bring in some strangers for what looks likes an urgent meeting. Back home, Gu Xi finds her brother happy and flushed with money, though Dongzi then arrives with mysterious news for Gu Liang about a death. At the hotel, Gu Xi sees Jiang Hao called a “murderer” by a woman as he arrives for work. Overnight there’s a heavy snowfall and Gu Xi, Gu Liang and Zhou Qingchang have a day out in the countryside together, during which Gu Xi sees the other two hugging. Zhou Qingchang gives Gu Xi back a cassette recorder that she’d given her at the house but Gu Xi had accidentally left in the lounge the following morning. When Gu Xi plays the tape inside, she finds it accidentally recorded the meeting with Zhou and his guests, in which it was planned to frame Jiang Hao (a business rival of Zhou’s) for the death of fisherman Chunbo, one of Zhou’s employees.
REVIEW
Expectations raised in the credits by the names of Zhang Yimou 张艺谋 (presenter 出品人) and Li Shaohong 李少红 (creative producer 监制) are only partly fulfilled in Wisdom Tooth 日光之下, the directorial debut of Heilongjiang-born Liang Ming 梁鸣, 37. An initially involving drama centred on a sister and her elder brother in wintry northeast China, the film starts losing its focus halfway through with a foggily developed crime story and then completely jumps the rails (and credibility) in the third act. That’s a shame, as it has a real feel for the pulse of life in Liang’s home province, as well as strong performances by its central quartet and an atmospheric score. After premiering at the Pingyao festival in Oct 2019, it opened in the Mainland late last year to tiny business, even for a specialised film, of RMB1 million.
Liang studied direction and performance at Beijing’s Communication University of China; his early acting gigs included supporting roles in films by Lou Ye 娄烨 (Spring Fever 春风沉醉的夜晚, 2009; Love and Bruises 花, 2011) as well as the lead in creepie low-budget indie Shadow Days 鬼日子 (2014), plus TV drama work. Liang finished the first draft of the script in 2012 but only secured finance in 2018. Reportedly, he originally wanted to shoot the film in summer and early autumn as so many movies set in northeast China are shot during the (picturesquely cold and snowy) winters there; but he ended up having to shoot in winter because of production delays. In the end it hardly matters: the photography by d.p. He Shan 何山, who did evocative work with remote locations in The Coffin in the Mountain 殡棺 (2014, aka Deep in the Heart 心迷宫) and Wrath of Silence 暴烈无声 (2017), memorably catches the cold, coastal light of early winter and, in the snowy scenes that occupy the second half, the weather doesn’t form an especially significant part of the movie. (In that respect, the film’s poster is misleading.)
The film’s first 40 minutes are impressive, as, from the opening scene of him scrubbing her back in a bathhouse, the viewer is made to feel the closeness between Gu Xi and her elder brother Gu Liang, who live on the edge of town in a shack. Effectively orphans who’ve always been there for each other since childhood, they’re both outsiders, along with a close but slightly crazy friend, Dongzi. Gu Xi works at a hotel, even though she still doesn’t have a hukou (residence permit), and Gu Liang catches fish for sale. But first an offshore oil spill puts paid to his business, and then another woman, the daughter of the port’s wealthy owner, enters their circle. As friendly as she is towards Gu Xi, the latter can’t help but feel shut out as a romance develops with Gu Liang; and Gu Liang is also embroiled in some shady business that Dongzi has got him into.
The woman in her brother’s life seems to stand for everything Gu Xi lacks – money, education, opportunity – though in fact she’s as emotionally needy as Gu Xi thanks to having few friends in China after coming back from South Korea and her parents effectively living separate lives. Though the strength of the early scenes is equally due to the two actresses, Liang’s script provides the opportunities, as the woman plies Gu Xi with presents and treats her like a sister. To her credit, Wang Jiajia 王佳佳 (the lead’s love rival in So Young 致我们终将逝去的青春, 2013, under her aka 王嘉佳) plays the role straight, not as a manipulative bitch, while Wu Xiaoliang 吴晓亮, as the brother, also plays his role with no side or guile, further throwing the psychological focus on Gu Xi. At 30 the youngest of the lead trio, top-billed actress Lv Xingchen 吕星辰 (so good as the wilful daughter in her debut, Folk Songs Singing 郎在对门唱山歌, 2011) catches every moment of doubt, suspicion, delight and neediness in the character, giving the film a strong dramatic spine in its first half.
Too bad, then, that things gradually start to unravel after that. The criminal subplot, which gradually assumes a higher profile, is only ever foggy at best; and Gu Xi’s very theatrical (and artistically pretentious) breakdown at her brother’s birthday party around the 75-minute mark, and the film’s messy structure thereafter, effectively sinks a very promising movie. Some of this may be due to the editing, which reportedly removed chunks of the crime plot as well as flashbacks to the leads’ childhood, in order to get the initial three-hour cut down to a more manageable length. But it still doesn’t excuse the laughable final scene of Gu Xi removing her own (very small) wisdom tooth by hand and then calmly eating an apple.
As well as d.p. He and editor Zhu Lin 朱琳, Liang has wisely chosen other good key crew for his first film. The rough, tacky art direction by Hong Kong’s Huang Jialun 黄家伦 (Lan Yu 蓝宇, 2001; Dangerous Liaisons 危险关系, 2012; Bride Wars 新娘大作战, 2015) is spot on for 20 years ago, and the use of a wordless choir by composer Ding Ke 丁可 (Port of Call 踏血寻梅, 2015; The Looming Storm 暴雪将至, 2017) pays dividends in sketching unspoken feelings, especially in a sequence where the trio survey the landscape from a tower. The film was largely shot in Tangwang county, Heilongjiang province. The Chinese title literally means “Under the Sun”, as in the phrase “everything under the sun”.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), Youku Pictures (CN).
Script: Liang Ming. Photography: He Shan. Editing: Zhu Lin, Wang Gaigai. Music: Ding Ke. Art direction: Huang Jialun. Styling: Ma Hongwei. Sound: Zhang Jinyan, Long Xiaozhu, Wang Zhiyong. Visual effects: Su Peng (Picturesque Images). Executive director: Qi Long.
Cast: Lv Xingchen (Gu Xi), Wu Xiaoliang (Gu Liang), Wang Jiajia (Zhou Qingchang), Wang Weishen (Dongzi), Tao Hai (Jiang Hao, hotel owner), Chen Yongzhong (Zhou Qingchang’s father), Chang Fangyuan (Meixin, hotel employee), Cheng Xinbo (Chengxu, hotel doorman), Zhang Di (singing man), Wu Tong (Li Jing), Bao Qianqian (Lanlan, hotel employee).
Premiere: Pingyao Film Festival (Crouching Tigers), 13 Oct 2019.
Release: China, 27 Nov 2020.