Original Title: Yong an zhen gu shi ji 永安镇故事集
Year: 2021
Country: China
Language: Mandarin
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Director: Wei Shujun 魏书钧
Screenwriters: Wei Shujun 魏书钧, Kang Chunlei 康春雷
Cinematography: Wang Jiehong 王階宏
Editor: Matthieu Laclau
Cast:
Yang Zishan 杨子姗
Huang Miyi 黄米依
Liu Yang 刘洋
Kang Chunlei 康春雷
Liang Ming 梁鸣
Yang Jin 杨瑾
Wang Jiajia 王佳佳
Yang Pingdao 杨平道
Huang Xufeng 黄旭峰
Wang Congshuang 王从双
Luo Kang 罗康
Matt Wu 吴中天
Rating: 7.2/10
Original Title: She guo fen nu de hai 涉过愤怒的海
Year: 2023
Country: China
Language: Mandarin, Japanese
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Director: Cao Baoping 曹保平
Screenwriters: Cao Baoping 曹保平, Pipi Wu 武皮皮, Mia Jiao 焦华静
based on the novel by Lao Huang 老晃
Music: Sida Guo 郭思达
Cinematography: Li Ran 李然
Editor: Yan Yiping 鄢一平
Cast:
Huang Bo 黄渤
Zhou Xun 周迅
Zhou Yiran 周依然
Zhang Youhao 张宥浩
Zu Feng 祖峰
Yan Bei 颜北
Yan Ni 闫妮
Abe Tsuyoshi 阿部力
Sun Anke 孙安可
Wang Xun 王迅
Ryô Ikeda
Rating: 7.4/10
Two Chinese films taking place in the contemporary milieux, RIPPLES OF LIFE is the second feature of millennial filmmaker Wei Shujun, a dramedy about a film crew’s preparation for production in a rural town called Yong’an, in Fujian Province (its Chinese original title can be literally translated as “the stories from a town called Yong’an”, yet ripples of discontent, discomfort and disagreement start to assail various characters. Cao Baoping, on the other hand, is a Generation Xer who has been sinking his teeth in this line of work for over two decades, crime genre is his forte and ACROSS THE FURIOUS SEA is his seventh feature. Shooting completed in 2019 but not released until late 2023, it is a fervid pursuit of a father to catch the boyfriend of his daughter, whom he believes is responsible for her shocking death.
Divided into three chapters, each titled after a Chinese film (“独自等待” Dayyan Eng’s WAITING ALONE, 2004; “看上去很美” Zhang Yuan’s LITTLE RED FLOWERS, 2006 and “冥王星时刻” Zhang Ming’s THE PLUTO MOMENT, 2018) and revolving around different characters, RIPPLES OF LIFE can be best appraised as a metafictional practice of filmmaking per se.
The first chapter, WAITIN ALONE follows an outsider’s perspective of peeping into the process of film pre-production. Xiao Gu (newcomer Huang Miyi, resembling a young Zhou Xun in several frames) is a young mother who is disaffected with her mundane life and an inconsiderate husband (Liang Ming). Rubbing elbows with the film crew by dint of the catering job of her restaurant, she insinuates herself to acquire a taste of attention and glamor after being recommended as the stand-in of the leading actress. But that self-pleasing feeling of “being somebody” is so evanescent, once the famous actress arrives, she is summarily relegated back to the status quo. The proficiency of handling a live fish becomes her last defiance.
LITTLE RED FLOWERS is centered on the aforementioned name actress Chen Chen (Yang Zishan, self-consciously capturing the jaded fantods of a celebrity consumed by the showbiz’s glitterati). Returning to her hometown after almost 20 years, she is ill at ease to the townsfolk’s fanfare and being put on a pedestal as a name card of the town, which undergoes a substantial development of tourism. Her attempt to recapture that nostalgic feeling of the past is put paid to after her encounter with some old classmates, especially Chen Hong (Yang Jin), probably her puppy love sweetheart. A seemingly cordial family dinner turns bitter and opportunistic in a moment’s notice, underscoring an irreparable incongruity and gap between a celebrity and the commoners.
Last chapter THE PLUTO MOMENT is a prolonged two-handler between the director (Liu Yang) and the screenwriter (Kang Chunlei, also the film’s co-scribe), about the unforthcoming shooting script. Their divergences on authorship, ideology, personal expressions and tastes are elaborated in a string of heated debates that ultimately sounds like a broken record, albeit the gleam of witticisms and ironies that crop up in the script. In a very masculine fashion, the seemingly irreconcilable debate is brought to a halt by the tidings of Diego Maradona’s passing, accompanied by the eternal strains of “Don’t Cry for me Argentina”. It seems that Wei’s film has designs on the evocation of an artist’s constant struggle for idealism and integrity against the antagonistic external demands, but the film’s worse-for-drink long-windedness may accidentally prove that maxim – empty vessels make the most noise. RIPPLES OF LIFE brings down its curtain as the film-within-a-film starts its shooting as if nothing has changed, and indeed nothing has. Like its title indicates, ripples appear and disappear, leaving nothing behind, an oriental Weltanschauung which can salve the minds ailed by mundane wormwoods.
ACROSS THE FURIOUS SEA has no frivolity to dispense as it opens with a blood-soaked scene of a young student Lina (Zhou Yiran, a bracing presence blended with innocence and world-weariness) in the last gasp, who is bled to death after 17 non-fatal stabs. Jin (Huang Bo), Lina’s divorced father, a fishing trawl captain, is going to pull out all the stops to find Miaomiao (Zhang Youhao, solid in presenting the maniacal side of the role), Lina’s abusive, cosplay-addictive boyfriend, who is the prime suspect of the crime, which leads him butt heads with Jinglan (Zhou Xun), Miaomiao’s overprotective mother. Their face-off includes a basement set on fire, a tripartite car crash on a highway during a fishing-raining tornado and a cliffside murder/suicide attempt. Cao’s directorial prowess, especially his supervision of the action sequences and his selective visual atmosphere, is hors concours among his peers.
Everything goes according to a stock revenge tale, Jin is inexorably headstrong but is also fortunate enough to always appear in the right place at the right time, and has enough resources to even carry out mayhem in Japan without much hindrance. The script has the penchant for taking coincidences for granted, the upshot of Li Lie (Zu Feng), Miaomiao’s father is misbegotten. Customarily, the law enforcement is depicted either ineffectual (easily talked down by a composed but hard-hitting Jinglan) or too sympathetic (letting Jin out of the joint after his violent break and enter) and a suffixed coda is obviously emplaced to appease the censorship (no crime shall go unpunished).
However, the film’s epic 144-minute length foreshadows a turn-up for the book near the end. The truth of Lina’s death is too hard for Jin to swallow because it never occurs to him that he is a lousy father and he is accountable. Incisively, ACROSS THE FURiOUS SEA juxtaposes the two pairs of parent-child, both from a broken family, to demonstrate the two types of defective parenting. Jin’s machismo negligence results in Lina a fathomless wanting of love and affection whereas Jinglan’s mollycoddling should be directly answerable for Miaomiao’s antisocial and malevolent proclivities.
Huang Bo, a Chinese household name who is mostly bankable for his comedic bent, really goes off the deep end in his most intense role to date. His hellacious application in anguish pays off remarkably near the end, when Jin is whacked by guilt and grief. Zhou Xun, reunited with Cao after THE EQUATION OF LOVE AND DEATH (2008), has a less prominent presence than Huang because Jinglan’s story is sadly sidelined, but Zhou remains memorable in every scene. Jinglan may sound like a cliché on paper, but Zhou makes good use of every opportunity to show there is an omnipresent inner battle raging inside her, and Jinglan may still have a second chance to rescue her son from perdition. That is the kindest message Cao’s gritty film can dispense.
referential entries: Cao Paoping’s THE EQUATION OF LOVE AND DEATH (2008, 7.2/10); Kong Dashan’s JOURNEY TO THE WEST (2021, 7.8/10); Gu Xiaogang’s DWELLING IN THE FUCHUN MOUNTAINS (2019, 7.0/10); Hu Bo’s AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL (2018, 7.7/10); Dong Yue’s THE LOOMING STORM (2017, 7.4/10).
Cinema Omnivore 