Year: 2024

The Lyricist Wannabe (填詞L, Norris Wong, 2023)

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Sometimes a dream might have come true only we never really noticed. In Norris Wong’s autobiographically inspired drama The Wannabe Lyricist (填詞L), a young woman battles her way towards becoming a Cantopop songwriter yet perhaps she already is one by virtue of her constant act of lyric writing. What she craves is the validation of having a song published, yet experiences setbacks at every step of the way that encourage her to doubt her talent or the right to continue chasing her dreams.

At a particularly low point after being taken on by a music producer to work with a spoilt influencer who’s getting studio time as some kind of favour, Sze (Chung Suet Ying) is told that her lyrics are no good and that after struggling so hard for six years perhaps she ought to take the hint and accept she isn’t suited to this line of work. It’s an act of intense cruelty, though one in part motivated by a well-meaning faux pas. In her excitement, she told the influencer she’d write lyrics for her album for free just to be published, but the palpable sense of desperation seems to have put the influencer off unable to have confidence in the work that Sze herself has devalued.

She encounters something similar during a partnership with an aspiring pop star who says he likes her lyrics but then drops the bombshell that he plans to sing in Mandarin because it’s a bigger audience. Ironically, on a trip to Taipei to sell his album she’s told that his accent is no good for the local market and while they like the song she worked on she later realises that they hired another lyricist for “real” release without even telling her. What’s more, tones don’t matter while singing in Mandarin whereas lyric writing in Cantonese is a painstaking process of trying to ensure that the tone of the word fits the melody. Aside from its political implications, not only does the pop star’s arbitrary decision to just sing it Mandarin ruin the lyrical flow she spent so long perfecting but entirely disrespects her work.

After deciding to take a break from trying to make it in music, Sze gets a job working at a ridesharing app startup where she’s roped in to create a jingle but once again her hopes are dashed when the business strays into a legal grey area and several of the drivers are arrested. While the app’s creator silently cries in his office, his female colleague ponders going somewhere else, “anywhere that doesn’t punish dreamers” which seems like a nod not only towards an oppressive capitalism that values only marketability but equally the increasingly oppressive atmosphere of the nation’s political realities. In a way this is what Sze ends up doing too, putting geographical distance between herself and the failure of her dreams by returning to the land which as the farmer says never lies to you, you reap what sow.

Yet for all her drive and perseverance there are others who view Sze’s obsession with her dreams as selfish and self-involved complaining that she rarely considers the feelings of others and neither notices nor cares if she may have hurt or inconvenienced them. She’s told that her lyrics are hollow because she lacks life experience but also is incapable of empathising and cannot see anything outside of her quest to become a lyricist. She watches other people move on, her brother getting married, friends enjoying career success etc while she’s still stuck looking for her big break only for something to go wrong just as everything was about to go right.

Wong signals the playful qualities of her fantasies though use of onscreen illustrations and even a karaoke-style video along with the nostalgic quality of the early 2000s setting of Sze’s schooldays with its MSN messenger and ICQ. Sze may be “dragged along by the melody” in more ways than one as she tries to make peace with her dreams and her future and find some way of living in harmony with the rhythms of the world around her but eventually comes to realise that she was a lyricist all along no matter what anyone else might have tried to convince her she was.

The Lyricist Wannabe screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival and opens in UK cinemas 15th March courtesy of Cine Asia.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Blue Imagine (ブルーイマジン, Urara Matsubayashi, 2024)

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Over the past few years, there have been a series of scandals exposing a culture rampant sexual harassment and abuse which has long been an inextricable part of the Japanese film industry. Just recently, a director very like the one in Urara Matsubayashi’s indie drama Blue Imagine (ブルーイマジン) was arrested following several accusations of sexual assault though like his film counterpart insists that he has done nothing wrong and all his relationships were consensual. 

This is the battle that the women face. When Noeru (Mayu Yamaguchi), an aspiring actress, tries to take her case to the press she’s first met by a scruffy reporter who puts it to her that she willingly participated in a game and her problem is she didn’t get her half of the bargain rather than having been victimised by a predatory man. The reporter claims that they have women like that in the office who are keen to accompany older men for drinks or dinner in the hopes of getting ahead. In retrospect, one could see Tagawa’s treatment of her as a kind of grooming. He love bombs her with praise for her talent and then half promises her a leading role in his upcoming film before attempting to take advantage her. He insists he’s done nothing wrong, and perhaps on some level believes he simply seduced the women he assaulted unable to see how the power he wields over them prevents them from refusing or resisting him. Then again, he and his producer routinely engage in misogynistic banter and wilfully give false hope to the actors who take part in his workshops hoping to bolster their chances of landing professional gigs. 

Eventually it’s this wilful crushing of dreams that begins to get to Noeru along with the knowledge that Tagawa is still out there probably doing the same thing to other women aided and abetted by a misogyinistc culture that prevents the women from speaking out through shame and social stigma. When Noeru tells her brother, a lawyer, what happened to her he snaps back that this is why he didn’t want her to become an actress as if she’s somehow brought it on herself. A female reporter who treats their case with sympathy encounters something similar when her editor is relcutant to publish because to him it’s just how things work in the entertainment industry so there’s not really a story in it. 

Yet the waters are muddied a little by a sub plot revolving around the concept of compensated dating or as it’s now called “sugar dating” in which young women “date” wealthy older men who provide them with material goods rather than money. One of Noeru’s friends encounters the dangerous side of the arrangement when her Daddy becomes violent and possessive, threatening to leak nude photos of her if she chooses to break up with him. Her friend Yurina (Yui Kitamura) disapproves of what she’s doing which is in effect what the actresses were accused of in engaging in, a solely transactional relationship. A young man Noeru meets who lives in the floors above the refuge she later begins helping out at sees some of their fliers but immediately says they aren’t really for him, which seems like an ironic comment though it’s also of course true that men also suffer sexual harassment from both men and women while facing a similar but different level of social stigma to the women who are just beginning to find the strength to speak out thanks to their newfound solidarity.

Much of this is due to the efforts of Michiyo who runs Blue Imagine to support women who’ve suffered sexual assault or violence. Her Filipina barmaid Jessica also suffered domestic abuse at the hands of her Japanese husband which was compounded by her vulnerability as foreign national knowing her husband could use her immigration status as a further tool to control her while she had little access to help or support.Yet it’s she who tells Noeru that silence is also complicity and she should speak out to the extent that she is able in order to improve the situation for women in the film industry or at least put a stop to Tagawa’s abuse of power.

Confronted at a press conference for his film that is still shockingly going ahead, Tagawa denies everything while the leading actress is forced to say that he was a perfect gentleman only later asking why he and the producer bullied her into a nude scene that wasn’t in her contract or why it was so important for her to take off all her clothes. Pressed by the women for a explantation for his assaults he offers only that his sexual desire was too powerful. The female reporter and her colleague bemoan the lack of progress over lunch, but also refer to another scandal about a minister and his secretary though it turns out not even to be the one the female reporter thought they were talking about. 

In the end, however, it’s less about changing the film industry or in indeed society at large as it is about solidarity between women as symbolised by the closing scenes in which everyone at Blue Imagine sits down to dinner together to enjoy traditional Filipino food prepared by Jessica and another woman who arrives at the refuge after suffering domestic violence. Through bonding with other women in similar positions and making the decision to fight back, Noeru comes to make peace with herself and begins moving past her trauma determined to support other women in the hope that something will finally change. Shot with a down to earth naturalism, the film may at times feel bleak and filled with a sense of despair yet displays its own resilience and eventual serenity born of female solidarity and long-awaited self acceptance,

Blue Imagine screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

July Rhapsody Coming to Cinemas in the US & Canada May – July 2024

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Cheng Cheng Films will be bringing the 4K restoration of Ann Hui’s classic July Rhapsody to cinemas in the US and Canada this May to July ahead of a VOD release later in the year.

Featuring both the final performance of screen icon Anita Mui and the debut of Karena Lam, the film centres on the figure of a dejected teacher on the brink of 40 who finds himself drawn transgressively towards one of his students while evidently disappointed by the way his life has turned out. Directed by Ann Hui and scripted by Ivy Ho (Comrades Almost a Love Story) the literary drama is a poignant and poetic exploration of yearning and thwarted desire. Our review.

Exact screening dates will be announced in due course. Follow Cheng Cheng Films on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news.

The Enigmatic Case (碧水寒山奪命金, Johnnie To & Andrew Kam, 1980)

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Nothing is quite as it seems in Johnnie To’s 1980 debut feature co-directed with Andrew Kam, The Enigmatic Case (碧水寒山奪命金) which it has to be more than said lives up to its otherwise nebulous English-language title. What exactly is the case at hand and why is the hero constantly being tortured for a crime he did not commit and gold he does not and never has had? Scripted by Zhu Yan, To’s debut nevertheless reflects the persistent concerns of his later career in its depiction of a cruel and arbitrary world ruled by chance even if it lacks the sense of lyricism for which he has become known.

Somewhere in feudal China, prisoner Lu (Damian Lau Chung-Yan) is being tortured by the evil magistrate Hsiung Chien who believes he knows the location of a vast amount of stolen gold. Together with another prisoner, he finally manages to escape and heads straight back towards the scene of the crime which he did not commit followed by a large number of former prisoners also hoping he will lead them to the missing treasure but all Lu is interested in is proving his innocence. Pursued by Hsiung, he also picks up another follower in the form of a beautiful young woman, Pei Pei (Cherie Chung Cho-Hung), who has come to the conclusion he must be an OK guy and hopes he will help her get to Stone City where she is supposed to collect the ashes of her recently deceased father only to discover from a wanted poster in a tavern that Lu is the guy convicted of killing him. 

In a repeated motif, the situation is further complicated by people not being quite as dead as they were reputed to be. Lu finds himself at the centre of a paradoxical conspiracy in which a collection of Robin Hoods has attempted to stage a rebellion against corrupt government by reappropriating official gold to return to the people. The only problem with that is that the government is already so corrupt that they don’t think much of torturing prisoners in order to confiscate their ill-gotten gains, while even those staging the rebellion have done so in a fairly cavalier way which involves the murder of the ordinary people they claimed to want to protect. 

No part of any plot but simply a wandering vagabond, Lu stumbles into a conspiracy and becomes a victim of it. He is consistently depicted as a noble hero, firstly in voluntarily leaving a rain shelter when Pei Pei arrives knowing that his presence may make her uneasy, and then by giving his money away to a widow forced into sex work by lack of other options after her husband died in the plague following lengthy period of “floods and droughts”. Floods and droughts might be a good way of describing a confusing era of generalised chaos provoked by a corrupt and self-serving government yet there is no real indication that the sickness can be cured even through Lu’s personal quest to clear his name. Even once the truth his revealed all he can do is try to ensure the money gets back to the peasants rather falling into the wrong hands. 

On a similar note, his relationship with Pei Pei cycles between suspicion and attraction as she tries to decide whether to believe his side of the story or take revenge against him for her father’s death. The film’s abrupt and unexpectedly tragic conclusion might in a sense hint that doesn’t matter because there is no real justice in the world only arbitrary cruelty, Lu’s certainty that his enemy does not lack basic humanity immediately disproved. Thematically apt if slightly ironic, To & Kam shoot most of the action leading to the final confrontation in near darkness lit only by Pei Pei’s torch as Lu continues his noirish quest for truth while otherwise employing freeze frames and slow motion as if in search of experimentation or a personal take on a contemporary style even while the world that they’ve created seems deliberately disjointed, filled with random (re)appearances and the comic machinations of a pair of Hidden Fortress-style petty crooks. Even the score sometimes echoes Star Wars while the James Bond theme plays over the discovery of the stolen gold as if adding an additional note of uncanniness. Still in this elliptical tale To & Kam have to take us back to where we started with Lu a melancholy wanderer adrift in a confusing world scarred both literally and mentally by its myriad cruelties. 

Theme song video (Traditional Chinese subtitles only)

The Sands of Kurobe (黒部の太陽, Kei Kumai, 1968)

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Kei Kumai’s three-hour epic of human engineering The Sands of Kurobe (黒部の太陽, Kurobe no Taiyo) opens with a titlecard to the effect that the film testifies to the courage of the Japanese people who brought the nation back to life after the war. Partly produced by Kansai Electric Power along with the production agencies of stars Toshiro Mifune and Yujiro Ishihara, the film is therefore somewhat conflicted, part bombastic celebration of Japanese engineering skill and ambivalent critique of the wilful decision to place success above all else including the welfare and safety of ordinary workers.

This critique is most evident to the flashbacks to the construction of Kuro 3 in 1938 which as many point out was conducted by the military under brutal and primitive conditions. The construction of the new Kurobe hydroelectric dam, by contrast, is a much more modern, enlightened affair in which workers have proper equipment and are not simply hacking at rocks with pickaxes wearing only a vest. But then as the conflicted Takeshi (Yujiro Ishihara) points out, it’s all effectively the same. Just because no one is pointing a gun at their heads, it doesn’t mean the men actually building the dam aren’t being exploited rather simply pressured by a vague notion of national good that they should be ready to lay down their lives. Could it be that “prosperity” is worse thing to die for than “patriotism”, especially when it appears as if your employer cares little for your physical wealth and economic wellbeing simply pledging that they will support the families of men killed during the dam’s construction. 

That there will be deaths seems inevitable. The man placed in charge of building a tunnel through the mountain, Kitagawa (Toshiro Mifune), is haunted by the vision of a man falling from a cliff that he witnessed when they first hiked to the dam site. He originally described the project as “crazy” and wanted to resign but was convinced to stay on. Kitagawa is himself fond of insisting on safety first where others are minded to cut corners, but also troubled by domestic issues in the film’s sometimes insensitive use of his daughter’s terminal leukaemia as a mirror for the dam project in considering what is and isn’t possible through human endeavour. The suggestion is that Kitagawa wants to believe the miracle of the dam is possible because needs to keep believing in a scientific miracle that can save his daughter, though obviously even if it is ultimately possible to build this dam that’s designed to fuel the post-war rocket to economic prosperity there are limits and unfortunately decades later we have still not found a cure for cancer though treatment may be more effective. 

Takeshi meanwhile has a similar battle with his hard-nosed father whose devotion to the dam project he describes almost like an addiction, suggesting that he values nothing outside of tunnelling and is willing to sacrifice everything in its name including the lives of himself and others. A flashback to to 1938 reveals that he asked his own teenage son to place dynamite and inadvertently caused his death though lax safety procedures which is the understandable reason why his wife eventually left him taking Takeshi with her. But the strange thing is for all his original opposition, Takeshi too is later captivated by the immensity of the challenge if also wary that the workers are falling victim to the same sickness as his father and are still being exploited by those like him who expect them to offer up their lives while paying them a pittance and complaining when the project does not proceed along their schedule. 

The almost nationalistic, bombastic quality of the film seems at odds with some of Kumai’s previous work save the discussion of the building of the 1938 tunnel though this largely serves as a contrast to imply that this time is different because they’re doing it for love of country rather the forced patriotism of the militarist past. Kitagawa justifies himself that if they don’t build the dam, economic prosperity will stall, companies will go bust, and people will lose their jobs but it seems somewhat hollow in the knowledge many men are certain to die while building this dam. Kumai undercuts the bombast with a series of scenes shot like a disaster movie in which supports collapse and the tunnel floods, or men are hit by falling rocks, eventually closing on an ironic Soviet-style statue dedicated to the labour of the workers that seems to question the immense loss of life along with the destruction of the natural beauty of Mount Kurobe but cannot in the end fully reconcile himself, torn between a celebration of human endeavour and its equally human costs. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Lump in My Heart (あつい胸さわぎ, Shingo Matsumura, 2022)

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A young woman with a growing desire for independence is thrown into turmoil by a totally unexpected diagnosis of cancer in Shingo Matsumura’s gentle coming-of-age tale and maternal drama, The Lump in My Heart (あつい胸さわぎ, Atsui Munasawagi). Perhaps because of her youth, the heroine finds herself struggling not with a fear of pain or death but of being unsexed while preoccupied with what it might mean for the rest of her life if she were to lose her breasts at such an early age.

It seems that Chinatsu (Mizuki Yoshida) has had a particular hangup about her chest size since the onset of puberty when her mother, Akiko (Tokiko Tokiwa), first refused to buy her a bra, making her wait a year longer than the other girls and leaving her with a sense of embarrassment that might be out of keeping with her age. One of the things that most bothered her about the doctors visits is that she was treated by a middle-aged man who was then the first person ever to touch her breasts which is something she’s unhappy about while also feeling insecure that she’s never had a proper boyfriend and might never get one if it turns out she needs a mastectomy. As it turns out, she’s carrying a torch for childhood friend Ko (Daiken Okudaira), an aspiring actor, but is too shy to say anything especially with this threat to her sense of femininity hanging over her. Of course, it doesn’t help that the doctors are asking her to make advance decisions about things an 18-year-old wouldn’t usually consider such as if and when she might want children because her feelings about her fertility might affect her treatment options. 

Then again, it’s also true that she remains trapped in adolescence resentful when her mother tells her not to worry she’ll make all the decisions but also perhaps relieved. A little sick of their co-dependency she’d been thinking of moving out though it seems difficult to believe she’d be able to afford rent with just her part-time job while studying full-time at university. But when her mother shows a little interest in an incredibly awkward man at work it sends her in the other direction, now feeling resentful and rejected while fearing the loss of their familial intimacy given it had just been the two of them for so long after her father’s death when she was four.

Motoharu (Masaki Miura) accidentally demonstrates the entrenched sexism of the world around them when he makes a misogynistic joke as an attempt at an icebreaker when introduced as the boss at the factory where Akiko works. It later comes to light that he left his last job due to an accusation of sexual assault, and though it turns out to have been a misunderstanding highlights a lack of awareness in the working environment that feeds in to Chinatsu’s ongoing preoccupation with her femininity and the elusiveness of romance. Her homework assignment over the summer holidays is to write a story about her first love, a topic which might be seen as bordering on inappropriate, perhaps discriminatory against those who do not feel romantic desire not to mention that Chinatsu is only 18 so it is only natural that she is still in the process of figuring things out and cannot be expected to have much of a perspective on what is to her still a fairly recent (in fact ongoing) event. 

Meanwhile, her mother and Motoharu are each feeling a pang of regret that they always let things pass them by like the arrival of the circus, destined to be in town for a limited time only so it’s best to catch it while you can. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done especially when not everyone’s on the same page. The lump in Chinatsu’s heart is her yearning for romantic love, though she still lacks the courage to be honest with her feelings even if it’s helped her repair her relationship with her mother. An unexpected piece of compassionate advice also helps her begin to re-imagine her femininity in accepting that the loss of her breasts might not mean that she’s destined to be alone forever nor undeserving of romantic love symbolically dissolving the lump in her heart in allowing her to move forward with her life no matter what the future might hold.

The Lump in My Heart screened as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Original trailer (English subtitles

Green Rain (草雨 / 초우, Chung Jin-woo, 1966)

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The false promises of the post-war era are brought home to two romantic youths dreaming of an illusionary future in Chung Jin-woo’s Green Rain (草雨 / 초우, Chou). At that time the youngest director to debut at just 25 years old with 1963’s The Only Son, Chung was a proponent of the “Cine Poem” movement which, in direct contrast to the literature film, sought to communicate through image alone minimising dialogue as much as possible. Heavily influenced by the French New Wave, particularly Godard’s Breathless and Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows, Green Rain is essentially an anti-romantic melodrama in which each of the lovers deceives and is deceived only to be awakened to the final truth that romantic salvation is nothing more than a childish fantasy. 

Chung opens with an excitable sequence in which the heroine, Yeong-hui (Moon Hee), introduces us to her “home”, which is in actuality that of a diplomat who has just been appointed Ambassador to France and so is currently living in Paris. Yeong-hui had hoped that the family would take her with them, but Mrs Kim and her daughter who is suffering from an otherwise unexplained illness and uses a wheelchair, have been left behind alone and she with them. Yet Yeong-hui loves everything about the idea of Parisian sophistication, overexcited when a package arrives from abroad that turns out to contain the latest French fashions for the two Kim ladies. Yeong-hui looks on wide-eyed, but the daughter is petulant and resentful. She doesn’t want her father’s presents and views them as insensitive because it’s not like she has anywhere to show off nice clothes when she’s stuck at home ill. The two women debate giving the clothes away but can’t decide who best to give them to before Mrs. Kim casually offers Yeong-hui the stylish raincoat which is in its own way about to change her life. 

As she later puts it, putting on the raincoat turns her into someone else. She waits eagerly for a rainy day and steps into a hip jazz club, somewhere she wouldn’t usually go, where she attracts instant attention precisely because of the coat. The women look on with scorn, noting the mismatch between the coat and the rest of her appearance, while the men swarm on her unpleasantly. Luckily, Cheol-su (Shin Seong-il) comes to her rescue and offers to drive her home believing that Yeong-hui is the ambassador’s daughter while she fails to disabuse him. He meanwhile tells her he’s a chaebol son, but really he’s a mechanic and sometime university student currently in a compensated relationship with a stylish older woman who we later learn to be some kind of gang leader. 

They fool themselves into thinking they’re falling in love, deceiving themselves as well as each other in playing at innocent romance. They meet every time it rains and go on charmingly innocent dates to parks and boating lakes shot with a dreamy romanticism, but also, in contrast to Barefooted Youth, indulge in stereotypically “low” forms of entertainment such as boxing and horse races without ever managing to blow their covers as they simultaneously both pretend to like Tchaikovsky because they’re trying to live up to an image of upperclass sophistication. 

Yet, there are cracks in their connection. They talk idly of the kind of future they’ll have with Cheol-su wanting an “enormous concrete home” while Yeong-hui claims she’s fine with somewhere small so long as there’s sunlight because she wants her life to be “real, not for show”. It’s an ironic statement under the circumstances, one which is perhaps brought home to her by the otherwise kindly old washerwoman across the way who is forever complaining about her “fake” coal that won’t light and moans about “fakes passing themselves off as the real thing”. Yet she continues to believe in her fairytale romance with Cheol-su, even while declaring it to seem “like a dream”, terrified that he’ll find out she’s just a maid and leave her. He, meanwhile, is less invested in the idea of romantic love, describing her first as a “business opportunity”. On their first meeting he finishes with the older woman, drops out of the “third class uni” he thinks is more trouble than it’s worth, and continues to push his luck with his boss by repeatedly “borrowing” customers’ cars because he thinks he’s on to a sure thing with the ambassador’s daughter and no longer needs to worry about keeping the job. He presses his friends for money, pawns everything he can get his hands on, buys a fancy suit and tries to convince Yeong-hui he’s upperclass only to be pushed into a corner when she declares she wants fancy crockery in her simple home. To get his dream life, Cheol-su commits a robbery only to be surrounded by an angry mob a la Bicycle Theives and receives the first of many beatings. 

This sense of frustrated humiliation might explain the unexpectedly traumatic closing scenes which contrast so strongly with gentle romanticism with which the film opened. Cheol-su risked everything for a mistaken ideal and he’s failed. He realises Yeong-hui has been deceiving him too, but rather than a cute romantic resolution that returns them both to the grounding of their original social class, he reacts with hypocritical rage and anger. Yeong-hui reemphasises that she loves him anyway, clinging fast to her dream of love, but he ruins her, consumed by toxic masculinity in his sense of hopelessness and inferiority as a working class man with no prospect of improvement now that his dream of marrying up has dissolved. In another film he might be the hero, reinforcing duplicitous ideals of societal misogyny, but in this one he is the fool and the villain. “Without an ounce of sorrow I understood what it was to be a woman” Yeong-hui adds bitterly, finally understanding her romantic fallacy for what it was, learning a painful lesson in naivety and self-deception and striding boldly back to her old life, wiser if perhaps less hopeful whereas Cheol-su runs away still chasing an easy fix to a more prosperous future. At once a criticism of the increasingly consumerist society, its deeply entrenched social inequalities, and its patriarchal social codes, Green Rain is most of all an anti-romantic melodrama in which love is nothing more than childish fantasy incapable of offering salvation in a world of constant impossibility. 

Article 20 (第二十条, Zhang Yimou, 2024)

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There’s something quite strange going on in Zhang Yimou’s New Year legal dramedy Article 20 (第二十条, dì èrshí tiáo). Generally speaking, the authorities have not looked kindly on people standing up to injustice in case it gives them ideas, yet the film ends in an impassioned defence of the individual’s right to fight back in arguing that fear of prosecution should not deter “good” people from doing “the right thing” such as intervening when others are in danger. Nevertheless, the usual post-credits sequences remind us that the legal system is working exactly as it should and the guilty parties were all caught and forced to pay for their crimes.

In this particular case, the issue is one akin to a kind of coercive control. Wang (Yu Hewei) stabs Liu 26 times following a prolonged period of abuse and humiliation. After taking out a loan to pay for medical treatment for his daughter who is deaf and mute like her mother Xiuping (Zhao Liying), Wang was terrorised by Liu who chained him up like a dog and repeatedly raped his wife. Prosecutor Han Ming (Lei Jiayin) eventually argues that his attacking Liu qualifies as self defence under Article 20 of the constitution because even if his life was not directly threatened at the time it was in the long term and he did what he did to protect himself and his family from an ongoing threat.

Han Ming becomes mixed up in several different cases along the same lines only with differing levels of severity. Some years ago he’d worked on the case of a bus driver who was prosecuted after stepping in to help a young woman who was being harassed by two louts. His problem was that he got back up after they knocked him down and returned to the woman which makes him the assailant. Zhang has spent most of his life since his conviction filing hopeless petitions in Beijing. Meanwhile, Han Ming’s son, Chen (Liu Yaowen), gets into trouble at school after stepping in to stop obnoxious rich kid and Dean’s son Zhang Ke from bullying another student.

Now jaded and middle-aged, Chen first tells his son that he should he give in an apologise to get the boy’s litigious father off his back though Chen is indignant and refuses to do so when all he did was the right thing in standing up to a bully. Bullying is the real subject of the film which paints the authoritarian society itself as a bully that rules by fear and leaves the wronged too afraid to speak up. The choice Han Ming faces is between an acceptance of injustice in the pursuit of a quiet life and the necessity of countering it rather than live in fear while bullies prosper.

The thesis is in its way surprising given that the last thing you expect to see in a film like this is encouragement to resist oppression even if the idea maybe more than citizens should feel free to police and protect each other from the immorality and greed of others. It is true enough that it’s those who fight back who are punished, while the aggressor often goes free but according to Han Ming at least the law should not be as black and white as some would have nor be used as a tool by the powerful, or just intimidating, to oppress those with less power than themselves. 

Other than the theatrical drums which play over the title card, there is curiously little here of Zhang Yimou’s signature style while the film itself is not particularly well shot or edited. It also walks a fine line between the farcical comedy of Han Ming’s home life in which he perpetually bickers with his feisty wife (an always on point Ma Li) who worries he’s too interested in his colleague Lingling (Gao Ye) who turns out to be an old flame from his college days during which he too was punished for standing up to a bully by being relegated to the provinces for 20 years. A minor subplot implies that the justice-minded Lingling is largely ignored because of the sexist attitudes of her bosses who feel her to be too aggressive and often dismiss anything she has to say in what amounts to another low level instance of bullying. The film ends in a rousing speech which seems more than a little disingenuous but even so ironically advocates for the right to self-defence against a bullying culture while simultaneously making a case for the authorities having the best interests of the citizen at heart which would almost certainly not stand up particularly well in court.

Article 20 is on limited release in UK cinemas courtesy of CMC.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Nightingale (鶯, Shiro Toyoda, 1938)

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Set in a quiet northern town, Shiro Toyoda’s Nightingale (鶯, Uguisu) finds the nation still struggling to emerge from the feudal past into the modern era. The film opens with a scene in the local train station, yet we’re also told that it is literally cut off from prosperity because the express train does not stop there and so it is relegated to the status of provincial backwater. Physically trying to flag the train down, the Mayor has been trying to get the town placed on the fast track but has had no luck so far.

The ticket man, who’d been more or less ignoring him, suggests they can’t put the station on the express line because the population of the town is decreasing presumably as young people migrate to the cities in search of work. One of the people waiting there is a man with two sons who tries to get the younger to pretend he’s younger than he is so he won’t have to pay for his ticket, though the ticket man refuses to give him a discount leaving the man with only the option to leave one of the boys behind while the family can no longer survive in the town. He explains that he’s been financially crippled by the medical fees to care for his now late wife and is clearly at his wits end trying to find a way to support his children.

The costs of medical treatment seem to be a direct driver of poverty and crime. Shifting to the local police station, we’re introduced to a man who’s become a serial chicken thief having begun stealing neighbour’s birds to pay for doctors to treat his sickly wife only she eventually left him for another man because he was always away conducting poultry heists so she thought he’d abandoned her due to her illness. His problem is compounded by the fact he had not formally registered their marriage intending to wait until the first child was born leaving him without a leg to stand on.

An official doctor later jokingly complains that he’s losing custom because no one in the area can afford modern medical care so they’re turning to dubious snake oil-style miracle cures proffered by a “fake priest” the police are about to arrest for fraud. Meanwhile, they’ve also arrested a middle-aged woman (Haruko Sugimura) who assists with births for violating the medical practice law. Branded a midwife she is really more of a wise woman who is well respected in the local community as someone who had had many children herself and also offers advice about folk remedies for various illnesses. She never claims to be a doctor and does not regard it as a job, merely as helping people even if she perhaps also enjoys the sense of being needed and important, and is unable to understand how that could ever be a crime. Unlike the priest, she takes no payment and uses her own resources though people sometimes give her small compensatory gifts such as parcels of rice as a thank you. When a woman goes into labour and the “official” midwife is not available, the policeman is unwilling to let her in but hearing the woman’s distress she runs to help her kicking all the policemen out of this very personal female space.

Her confusion bears out that within the general society as people struggle to adjust to a more ordered modernity and the encroachment of urbanity which is what the police themselves represent. Then again, they are presented as being more compassionate certainly than the staff of the railway and seemingly have a duty of pastoral care for the local area which is separate from their role in enforcing the law. A secondary drama that began at the train station involves a young woman who is being sold into sexual slavery by her father against her will. She is eventually rescued by an earnest school teacher who says the sale isn’t valid because she also signed a contract to become a teacher, convincing her father to change his mind with the help of the police who remonstrate with him that it’s wrong to sell your child even if the practice had been somewhat normalised which plays into a propagandistic element about the importance of moving on from “backward” rural practices still mired in the feudal era. The police also have access to a fund which can be used to get the broker out of the way in an effort to stamp out this morally indefensible situation in which parents sell their children into indentured servitude for reasons of poverty. 

They also agree to help an old lady who’s arrived in search of a child she fostered a decade previously who was taken back by her birth mother and sold to a circus. Like the chicken thief, the old woman was caught out by the modern convention of paperwork. She had been led to believe the adoption had been processed and the child placed on her own family register, but was illiterate and therefore easily deceived. The old woman also becomes a victim of the dodgy priest and the disease currently spreading because of his problematic cure-alls which people have turned to out of desperation in their poverty.

But despite the police’s apparent altruism, the arrival of a young woman selling a captive nightingale reveals the irony that she’s come there because it’s the only place anyone has any money. Unfortunately it turns out that capturing a nightingale has also been ruled illegal, even if one of the policeman was interested in buying it if only it could sing, so she’s come to the wrong place and if she doesn’t release it she’ll end up with a fine. The nightingale’s song is later replaced by that of a flute player who had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly having spent some money he was given towards the funeral of his baby on drink. 

The police are in some ways a disruptive influence, trying to bring a new urban order to this rural place which has its own laws and customs often at odds with those of the city. Their efforts tie in to a persistent message of modernising for the good of the nation which was particularly current in the late 1930s though the film is equally sympathetic towards the plight of the rural poor who are not after all being given very much support as the youngsters move to the city leaving the old behind, trapped on the slow line cut off from the benefits of modernity while otherwise expected to simply adapt to new visions of civility in a society still trying to emerge from the feudal past. 

Monk Comes Down the Mountain (道士下山, Chen Kaige, 2015)

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A wandering monk is forced to consider a series of dualities presented by his traditional upbringing and burgeoning modernity in Chen Kaige’s ‘30s wuxia Monk Comes Down the Mountain (道士下山, dàoshì xiàshān), inspired by the work of novelist Xu Haofeng. Essentially a picaresque, Chen sets orphan He Anxia (Wang Baoqiang) adrift in the secular world where he learns to see good and bad and perhaps the murky overlap between the two while simultaneously telling a rather subversive tale of frustrated same sex love and corrupt authorities. 

When the temple at which he was abandoned as a baby falls into financial difficulty, He Anxia enters a kung fu fighting competition he believes will put him first in line for food only in cryptic monk fashion the “prize” turns out to be exile as the winner is obviously the most capable of looking after themselves alone in the world. He Anxia is however something of an innocent and despite the monk’s warning to stay true to himself soon falls into difficultly yet ends up discovering a new father figure in monk turned pharmacist Tsui while trying to steal his fish. For all of Tsui’s goodness, however, there is discord in his house as his pretty young wife Yuzhen (Lin Chi-ling) prefers his dandyish brother, Daorong (Vanness Wu), who has abandoned the filial piety of the past to chase modern consumerist pleasures in selling the shop he inherited for a fancy ring. When the situation escalates, Anxia finds himself taking drastic action only to wonder if he did the right thing. 

Head of a local temple Rusong (Wang Xueqi) encourages him to think beyond dualities, wondering if he did the right thing for the wrong reasons or the wrong for right. This temple is famous for helping women have male children through praying to goddess of mercy Guan Yin, yet under Rusong’s predecessor they adopted a much less spiritual solution to the problem in simply providing a place where other men could father their sons. Rusong again asks him if the men who took part were sinners or saints while laying bare the paradoxes of the monastic life in the contemporary society. A petitioner goes so far as to ask Anxia if he might be her saviour, pointing out that if she cannot provide a male heir even though the problem may lie with her husband she may be cast out of her family, thereby disgraced not to mention financially ruined. Having lived all his life in the temple surrounded by men, gender inequality is not something Anxia had been very aware of. He tells her that though he had no family he was able to find one only to lose it, little understanding why she might not be able to do the same. 

On the other hand, he appears to show surprising perspicacity in the touching moments in which he must say goodbye to his second father figure, reclusive kung fu master Xiyu (Aaron Kwok), in realising the depth of his feelings for army buddy Boss Zha (Chang Chen) who then becomes his final master. Ironically, the obviously homoerotic relationship between Xiyu and Boss Zha was perhaps less controversial in 2015 than it might be in the present day but its inclusion is nevertheless surprising if also poignant as Xiyu tells Boss Zha that he should resume his stage career, marry and have children, while he will live a quiet and lonely life perfecting his kung fu though he will always keep him in his heart. Fiercely loyal to his mentors, Anxia accepts this relationship totally and appears to fully understand its import to Boss Zha to whom he subsequently transfers his allegiance as they band together to face off against big bad Peng. 

Playing into the good fathers and bad motif, Peng’s problem is his sense of paternal rejection in being passed over by his biological father in favour of Xiyu whose skills are stronger. After having ousted his rival, Peng fears the same thing will happen to his own son who is not only lacking in aptitude for martial arts but also appears to have a drug problem. To win they resort to cheating in picking up a pistol signalling both their own lack of jianghu honour and the nature of the changing times in which the very nature of kung fu has perhaps become obsolete. Meanwhile, Anxin and Zha are targeted by the police commissioner, Chao, who happens to be a former triad and also points his gun at them if less successfully while in cahoots with the amoral Peng and son.

Only through each of these subsequent encounters does Anxia begin to realise why he was cast down from mountain, understanding that he had to witness the good and bad of the secular world in order to understand his Buddhist teachings and finally find his place. With sumptuous production values perfectly recreating the 1930s setting, Chen’s quietly subversive 20th century wuxia takes aim at the ills of the contemporary society in its tales of corrupt authorities and amoral greed, but eventually finds solace in simple human goodness and genuine relationships as Anxin continues on his long strange journey to find his way home. 

International trailer (English subtitles)