Category: China

Octopus with Broken Arms (误杀3, Jacky Gan Jianyu, 2024)

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It’s quite surprising, somehow, that Octopus with Broken Arms (误杀3, wùshā 3) gets away with as much as it does simply being another recent mainstream movie set in an unidentified South East Asian nation where, conveniently enough, almost everyone speaks Mandarin. The third in the Sheep Without a Shepherd series, it quite clearly takes aim at the tendency of authoritarian governments to cover things up and deny the public the truth in any situation. Ordinarily, the censor’s board wouldn’t like that pointed out, nor would it like implications of police violence and corruption though as this is all taking place in “Not Mainland China”, it seems to have passed them by.

Then again, by setting itself overseas the film also deflects the implications of its focus on child trafficking which is a huge and well documented problem on the Mainland though here it becomes something that only happens overseas. The closing title cards in English offer a series of statistics about missing children worldwide, but avoid mentioning the statistics in China where the One Child Policy contributed to a phenomenon of children being kidnapped from the cities to be raised on rural farms while the preference of sons often saw daughters otherwise sold off.

In any case, Bingrui (Xiao Yang) is an ethnic Chinese refugee raised in an orphanage who got a huge capital injection from a gangster after finding his missing child and turned it into an internationally successful cosmetics corporation. When his own daughter Tingting is kidnapped, he seems to know immediately that he’s not been targeted simply because he’s a wealthy man and suspects the involvement of Fu-an (Feng Bing), an old “friend” with whom he’d had “a few issues” who had approached him for money for his son’s heart transplant which he had given him. 

It doesn’t take long to figure out that Bingrui must have been involved in something untoward even if he’s now a devout Buddhist who’s just trying to be a good father having lost his wife in childbirth. Fed a series of clues to find his daughter, it’s clear he’s being led towards a kind of confrontation with his past along with a test of character. He may be able to say that he did the things he did because he had no other choice. If he had not joined the side of those acting against all common notions of humanity, he would simply have become one of their victims. But there is a choice involved all the same, and Bingrui chose survival through the sacrifice of other lives. 

The fact that the kidnapper lives streams much of the chase suggests they’re less interested in the money than truth and ultimately want Bingrui to blow the whistle on a vast conspiracy which otherwise can’t be investigated because it’s burrowed deep into the police force and perhaps beyond. As one of those working against him later says, there are too many secrets destined to remain so that should be brought out into the light. A newsreader, however, remarks on hearing about a possible cover up of the deliberate murder of a number of trafficked children passed off as “refugees”, that what he most fears is that the people have lost faith in their government. Nevertheless, there might be something quite subversive about the lengthy scenes of citizens expressing discontent with blatant lies from the authorities and openly begging for the truth given the famously tightlipped CCP’s usual approach to public information.

In any case, the more we learn about Bingrui the harder it is for us to sympathise with him and the film then becomes more about proper paternity and the willingness of a parent to surrender their own life for that of their child. The film takes its English title from an incredibly elaborate school play little Tingting is involved in at the beginning of the film about how Octopuses are all orphans because their parents abandon them soon after birth and then pass away. Bingrui wasn’t exactly an orphan, like many of the children he was kidnapped from a loving family, but became one and lost his sense of humanity in the process. The question is whether he will be able to abandon his instincts for self-preservation to save his daughter or if, in the end, he will choose to save himself just as he did when chose to join those who kidnapped him rather than become a victim. Like many similarly themed thrillers of recent years, the film is built around a series of outrageous twists many of which are startlingly obvious but in their way serve the shocking quality of those that aren’t. What’s truly shocking is the depth of this conspiracy which hints not just at children being stolen and sold to overseas adopters, but trafficked into sexual exploitation or for illegal organ harvesting. The barbarity knows no bounds, and while the actions of Tingting’s kidnappers are in themselves brutal it’s clear they have no other way to ensure the injustice they face will be addressed. Indignant but avoiding sentimentality, Jacky Gan Jianyu’s slickly designed B-movie thriller nevertheless ends on a note of karmic retribution that the “hero” may not have earned but does at least allow him to make good on his promise and symbolically atone for the all the pain and suffering his callousness self-interest has caused. 

Trailer (English subtitles)

Honey Money Phony (“骗骗”喜欢你, Su Biao, 2024)

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Can you really say a scammer who just takes people’s money without messing with their feelings is any better than one who just robs them? That’s a justification put forward by fraudster Ouyang (Sunny Sun) in Su Biao’s remake of Thai rom-com The Con-Heartist, but it’s a difficult one to swallow. After all, even if you just trick someone out of a small amount of cash,the psychological effects can be devastating though the pain may not be quite the same as getting your heart broken in a love scam.

Qinglang (Jin Chen) has indeed had her heart broken by the lothario Zijun (Wang Hao) whom she met at a tennis class she started going to after moving to the fictional city of Aoo Kang. Later it’s revealed that the cause of her move was getting fired from her company for reporting her boss for sexual harassment while she was also in a bit of debt from breaking a non-compete clause by getting another job, something which Zijun apparently sorted out for her. But not long after she took out a loan to give him money supposedly for his university tuition, Zijun ghosted her and she realised she’d been the victim of a romance scam. Now she’s on the hook for that too, working a series of part-time jobs in fast food restaurants and walking dogs as well as an unsuccessful gig as a vlogger in addition to her regular job in insurance. 

Experience is maybe why she suddenly thinks twice after being contacted by someone purporting to be from the vlogging site telling her she’s been suspended and needs to pay a fine. After getting Ouyang’s info from the bank she threatens to expose him but then makes a deal, if he helps her scam Zijun into giving back the money she gave him she won’t take this any further. Of course, there’s no guarantee Ouyang hasn’t just switched to a different con while Qinglang remains quite naive and despite herself trusting him. Then again, he’s the exact opposite of Zijun who took advantage of her despair and offered himself as a source of constant support. His aloofness and apparent honesty about what he is may in their way reassure her. 

There is something that might be comforting in Ouyan’s unflashiness. Though he drives a convertible, it’s not a particularly glamorous sort and has a busted taillight and in any case, he also lives in it. According to him, that’s so he can get away quickly if he needs to, but also suggests that it’s not really all about the money. Zijun, meanwhile, is greedy and materialistic, hopping from one wealthy woman to the next while hoping to join the social elite and live a high life of fast cars and wild parties. A justification for Ouyang’s scamming is given in a tragic backstory which may or may not be true suggesting that he was born out of wedlock and his mother died in childbirth. He was raised by his grandmother and uncle while his birth father entered his life at one point and tried to connect with him but it turned out it was all because his other son from a different relationship needed a bone marrow transplant. As soon as he found out Ouyang wasn’t a match, he disappeared from his life. 

The implication is that Ouyang scams as a kind of revenge because he doesn’t trust people and therefore is unable to live an ordinary, honest, life but through connecting with Qinglan and falling in love he develops the desire to live with more compassion and stability. Qinglang, meanwhile, gains confidence in herself and realises that her low self-esteem left her vulnerable to manipulation. Her friend, Xiaohui (Li Xueqin), who was also in massive debt and ended up posing as a blind person to carry out accident scams, also puts the skills she’s learned to good use to progress her acting career which might all be a very contradictory message even if there’s something satisfying about scamming a scammer and especially one as full of himself as Zijun. Released for Western New Year, the film has a zany wholesomeness despite its bleak subject matter and hints at a sense of despair in contemporary life in China but does indeed suggest that cheaters don’t necessarily need to prosper and you do have a degree of control over your life even if it’s just deciding to choose love and move on rather than wallow in a sense of futility. 

International trailer (English subtitles)

Her Story (好东西, Shao Yihui, 2024)

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Nine-year-old Molly (Zeng Mumei) says she doesn’t have any dreams anymore and is content to remain a member of the audience which is the role she’s been assigned as part of orchestra class. In truth, that might be something she’s picked up from her mother, Tiemei (Song Jia), who also says that she no longer has dreams because she’s seen the reality. Shao Yihui’s Her Story (好东西, is being hailed as something of a landmark film given that mainstream Chinese cinema does not often engage with feminist issues or at least not quite so directly as in this strangely joyful celebration of female solidarity and found family.

Indeed, the Chinese title of the film is “good things” which Tiemei and Molly begin to find after being forced to move to a cheaper apartment in an old-fashioned walk-up building because Tiemei is struggling to find work in a shrinking journalism industry. She later tells a colleague at her new job working for a friend’s online news outlet that she took a break from her career as an investigative reporter not because she had her daughter but because she realised she didn’t have the strength to go on fighting the system. 

Yet in a way she’s fighting the system solely in the way she lives as a divorced woman raising her daughter alone. It later transpires that it was her husband who wanted the divorce because he got fed up with living with as househusband even though that was his choice, though he seems to regret the decision and randomly tells Tiemei that he’s getting a vasectomy as some kind of strange proof of loyalty in insisting Molly will be his only child. Since they’ve split up, he’s apparently come to a feminist awakening and is cognisant of his male privilege thanks to actually reading Tiemei’s articles but ironically still feels the need to insert himself into conversation. 

In any case, after moving into the apartment, Tiemei and Molly become friends with the bohemian woman who lives upstairs and is the singer of a rock band. Ye (Zhong Chuxi) is a very chaotic presence and the total opposite of Tiemei’s defiant practicality, but despite herself Tiemei becomes a kind of maternal figure to her after scaring off a creepy guy who was following her late at night. But equally Ye becomes a kind of big sister or secondary maternal figure to Molly, offering her a more relaxed vision of womanhood along with a creative space to express herself. 

Perhaps surprisingly for a mainstream Chinese film in which LGBTQ+ themes, the two women effectively end up raising this child together almost as if they were a couple in a happy familial environment. They often share a bed and at one point are actually mistaken for lesbians by Ye’s sometime optometrist boyfriend Hu to whom she lied about having a child so that he wouldn’t see her as clingy, effectively adopting Tiemei’s persona. Tiemei even helps Ye sort of break up with him by posing as the scorned lesbian partner, hilariously laying it on thick to get Hu to trip himself up and admit to being a playboy womaniser. Though it’s obviously true that they are not in fact romantically involved, the film nevertheless does not only acknowledge the existence of lesbian women and even lesbian women raising children but tacitly approves and accepts them as part of its broader feminist themes. It even opens on a shot of what appears to be queer longing in lingering on a very striking Ye leaning out of her window drinking in the daytime as Molly looks up from below in wonder. 

It is in fact Molly who becomes the centre of the film as she regains the ability to have dreams again while discovering herself and gaining the courage to take risks in search of happiness in a society all too keen to slap women down. Tiemei writes an article about what it’s really like to be a working single mother but is quickly attacked by internet trolls causing Molly to retreat into herself, realising that if her mother hadn’t written the article she wouldn’t be getting trolled. But thanks to the supportive environment around her and the relationship between Teimei and Ye, Molly resolves not to let the world beat her into submission. The scenes of her rocking out on her drums while the drippy boy who keeps “denouncing” her at school flounders at the dull music club concert speaks volumes. She may realise that she prefers being in the audience anyway, but that’s alright. Writing is her outlet, something else she may have have picked up from her mother, and she’s less of a bystander than observer humorously recording the compromises and contradictions of the world around her while bolstered by her found family and a gentle sense of female solidarity.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Love After Love (第一炉香, Ann Hui, 2020)

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A naive young woman’s path from besotted teen to tortured yet masterful courtesan amid the colonial realities of pre-war Hong Kong is elegantly charted in Ann Hui’s stately adaptation of the novel by Eileen Chang, Love After Love (第一炉香, Dì yī lú xiāng). A slow-burn romantic tragedy, Hui’s floating drama at once reflects a sense of hopeless rootlessness and the ruinous intensity of a one-sided love but also the transgressive possibilities for freedom and independence in the rejection of traditional patriarchal social codes. 

Displaced from her native Shanghai by ongoing political tension, Weilong (Ma Sichun), the daughter of a once noble house, finds herself impoverished and left with the choice either of accompanying her family in returning to the Mainland where she will be set back a year in completing her studies or remaining behind alone in Hong Kong to graduate high school. Unable to support herself, she decides to turn to an estranged aunt she barely knows, throwing herself on her mercy and asking to be taken in even while knowing of the animosity which exists between her father and his sister. That would be because her aunt, Madame Liang (Faye Yu), turned down all the suitors her family found for her and chose instead to become the mistress of a wealthy man. He now having died, Madame Liang has inherited a sizeable fortune including a European-style mansion where she hosts society parties and enjoys a hedonistic lifestyle which has earned her a reputation as a seducer of young men. 

On her introduction to this world, one of the maids uncharitably describes Weilong’s entrance as like that of a new girl in a brothel and there is indeed something of that in her new role in the household, dangled like a bauble in front of Madame Liang’s collection of wealthy male associates, though Madame Liang apparently intends her only as decoration rather than gift. Tensions come to the fore as Weilong develops a fondness for a dashing young man, George (Edward Peng Yu-Yan), the mixed ethnicity son of coterie member Sir Cheng (Paul Chun), previously eyed by Madame Liang who understands much better than her naive niece that men like George are dangerous in their destabilising faithlessness. For Madame Liang, so perfectly in control, George may be manageable but as she later tells Weilong, unwisely goading her that her life of comfort is a failure because she will never find love, the only danger that exists to her is in unequal affection a prophecy that will in a sense come to pass in Weilong’s single-minded obsession to possess the heart of George. 

Weilong may describe Madame Liang’s lifestyle as ridiculous, yet as she points out her transgressive sexuality is also currency that permits the opulence and luxury in which she lives. Seduced by this world as much as by George, Weilong disapproves but admits that she is no longer the naive girl who arrived even if she also dislikes this new version of herself, considering a return to Shanghai and a possible reset to become someone else again presumably more in line with contemporary notions of social proprietary. She can’t deny that Madame Liang’s rejection of the patriarchal institution of marriage has granted her an unusual degree of independence otherwise unavailable in the contemporary society. She herself faces a choice in approaching the end of her high school days, either progressing to higher education, seeking work, or getting married naively insisting to Madame Liang that she will earn money in order to support George and his lavish lifestyle even as she advises her to enact a plot of romance as revenge. 

While Weilong’s discarded suitor benefits financially in becoming Madame Liang’s lover, she sponsoring his study abroad, Weilong again attempts to reverse traditional gender roles by trapping George as a kind of trophy husband. He had repeatedly told her he wasn’t the marrying kind, in part because of his insatiable sexual desire and perpetual loneliness in having lost his mother young, yet also because of his father’s perfectly acceptable yet socially destructive romantic history which includes several concubines and illegitimate children meaning there will be little in the way of inheritance. If he married, he’d need to marry well but Weilong’s family is impoverished and she has only her connection with Madame Liang to leverage. As she’d warned her it would be, the relationship between them will always be unhappy, Weilong winning a symbolic victory in coercing George towards marriage but unable to accept the limits of her control while he, paradoxically, is emotionally honest only with her but she can only see this as a slight as if he is so indifferent towards her that she is not worth lying to. 

As Weilong gradually morphs into her aunt, George’s sexually liberated sister Kitty lands on a different path later becoming a nun. The three women attempt to muster all of the advantages afforded to them under an oppressive patriarchal system but none perhaps find true happiness. It might be tempting to read a subversive comment on the nature of colonialism in the various frustrated love affairs and persistent sense of rootlessness, Hui’s drama is at heart a romantic tragedy in which two people become locked in a torturous relationship because they cannot understand each other. Their very idea of love is different. Doyle’s floating camera perfectly captures the fleeting opulence of this unreal society itself lingering on an abyss as the lovers continue to dance around each other looking perhaps for the love after love in immaterial comfort. 

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Tai Chi Master (张三丰, Lin Zhenzhao & Cheng Siyu, 2022)

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The funny thing is that, in contrast to contemporary Chinese cinema, Lin Zhenzhao & Cheng Siyu’s The Tai Chi Master casts those who stand up to corruption as the villains. Of course, their insurrection threatens the social order and their subsequent to overthrow the Song Dynasty may be too revolutionary to find much a approval but it’s surprising all the same even if the film also finds fault with officials too focused on the “big picture” rather than the citizens in the townships they’re supposed to be overseeing.

In any case, though it should not be confused with the Jet Li film from 1993 with which it shares both English and Chinese titles, this Tai Chi Master is once again an origin story for the renowned Taoist scholar Zhang Sanfeng which is the name the hero takes at the film’s conclusion having achieved a degree of enlightenment through experiencing near death and tragedy at the hands of the Netherworld Cult. For the most part, he goes by his courtesy name Junbao and is something of a libertine, spending most of his time enjoying fine liquor and trying to craft immortality pills as a member of the Wuji Sect. 12 years previously when the Imperial Court increased taxes to a unreasonable degree, the Netherworld Cult slaughtered the corrupt officials but were condemned by the rest of society for their actions. Junbao has a habit of drinking with Kui Tianxing, the former head of the Netherworld Cult who has been imprisoned in the Wuji’s Sect’s gloomy basement for the last 12 years and in fact transgressively learns from him “evil” techniques claiming that there is no good or bad in martial arts for all depends on the righteous heart of the practitioner.

But there is unrest brewing and it seems some can no longer bear the corruption and indifference of the noblemen supposedly managing their interests on behalf of the court. After taking a liking to a mysterious forest woman who rides a giant silkworm she charms with a flute, Junbao is taken to task for his solipsistic hedonism. She asks him how he can ignore suffering in the world and continue to remain apart from it, but he doesn’t truly gain the desire to oppose injustice until the Wuji Sect is targeted and his master is killed. Even then, his opposition is awkwardly positioned given that the new Netherworld Cult is also motivated by the desire to throw off the authority of corrupt officials, which means in a sense that Junbao is defending that same corrupt social order which he does not otherwise challenge.

In keeping with the teachings of the real Sanfeng, he instead preaches righteousness and harmony but otherwise removes himself from the martial arts and wider worlds, while his brief romance with the mysterious silkworm woman seems to fall by the wayside in his ongoing quest for spiritual enlightenment. Meanwhile, it has to be said that his relationship with the little girl who seems to be in his care is a little uncomfortable at times. In what is presumably supposed to be a sweet and innocent piece of childish banter, she frequently flirts with him, makes statements about becoming his girlfriend, and expresses jealousy towards the silkworm woman all of which seems very inappropriate for a child of no more than 11 or 12.

Nevertheless, the fight choreography is often interesting if sometimes marred by imperfect CGI and mid-level production values for a streaming film. The injection of fantasy-style lore with its demons and underground, cave-like bases gives the film’s internal universe a degree of consistency in reflecting the yin/yang philosophy espoused by the Netherworld Cult in the white-clad, surface-living Wuji Clan and the dark, anarchic world of the often masked rebels. The mysterious silkworm and the flute-playing woman meanwhile seem to occupy a liminal space caught between each world and whatever she says like Junbao not really a part of either until pulled into the final battle. Perhaps troubling or at times contradictory in some of its implications, the film does at least have a degree of charm in its likeable characters and fleshed-out backstories that hint at the possibilities of an ongoing franchise.

The Tai Chi Master is available digitally in the US courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer

High Forces (危机航线, Oxide Pang Chun, 2024)

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It’s always a worrying sign when the guy in front of you at check-in has brought a parachute. Shot back in 2021 and finally hitting screens three years later, Oxide Pang’s airborne hijack thriller High Forces (危机航线, wēijī hángxiàn), pits veteran star Andy Lau against a gang of crooks who’ve taken his plane hostage in order to convince the CEO of the airline to reveal the password to his accounts so his wife can send them a large amount of money.

Perhaps surprisingly given recent Chinese cinema’s attitudes to wealth, the film remains uncritical of the existence of a luxury airliner with a top deck hotel complete with duty free. The CEO in fact later becomes a hero, fighting alongside Lau’s Haojun in order to save the lives of the passengers, while it’s revealed that it’s his wife’s family who founded the airline he took over that may have been conducting some very shady business dealings. Nevertheless, it’s the economy class passengers the amoral Mike (Qu Chuxiao) starts bumping off before planning to vacate the plane via parachute along with the pilots leaving it to plunge to the ground.

Yet, the hijacking is also Haojun’s chance for redemption seeing as his estranged wife (Liu Tao) and daughter are coincidentally on the same plane while travelling to seek medical treatment for daughter Xiaojun’s (Zhang Zifeng) eyes. Haojun was driving recklessly and got into an accident after which Xiaojun lost her sight and gained a deep-seated resentment towards her father. This reckless streak is attributed to anger issues stemming from untreated bipolar disorder which Hao now believes he now has under control. Mike is also taking the same medication and the two men are presented as reflections of each other. Haojun’s flashes of rage are expressed through the colour red flooding the screen, while Mike’s greed and envy seem to be reflected in green. Whether this is a helpful framing of bipolar disorder or not is up for debate, but the implication is that through defeating Mike Haojun can overcome himself, triumph over his anger issues, and regain his rightful place as a husband and a father.

Ironically he first tries to do this by using a toy walkie-talkie dropped by a little boy whose father seems to have a lot of issues of his own to communicate with Xiaojun who is trapped in first class with the kidnappers. Using his special forces and security skills, Haojun crawls all over the plane trying to pick the kidnappers off one by one until being left with the core group led by Mike. A slightly bum note is struck when one of the stewardess’ suddenly overcomes her aversion to a sleazy colleague who was harassing her after he takes a bullet on her behalf, but she too rises to the occasion helping Haojun fight back against the kidnappers as do several of the passengers who set on the last of Mike’s men making sure he can’t leave the plane. 

Of course, the film ends with the usual set of title cards explaining that all the wrongdoers were caught and punished while Haojun was rewarded for his heroic actions in saving the lives of the passengers and crew. Nevertheless, in the grand tradition of overblown action dramas it also has its share of silliness such as the obvious set up of one of the stewardesses showing off her new skydiving certification. This particular airline should also probably have another look at its hiring procedures and employee vetting. The real enemy is perhaps corporate corruption and shadiness in business though these leads are never really followed in much more than a cursory fashion with the action remaining mainly on the plane even as Mike seems content to simply shoot people just to make a point. Like The Captain, the film’s conclusion is basically a celebration of the nation’s emergency services who all come together to help the plane land safely through a rather improbable solution to its myriad problems. Nevertheless, for much of its runtime it’s a very effective, if occasionally absurd, action drama in which a lone vigilante takes on a plane full of crooks with sometimes surprising violence while trying to fight his way back to his family and restore his image of himself as father if only in his daughter’s eyes.

Original trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

The Mob (龙虎制霸, Zhao Cong, 2023)

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The feckless son of the head of the Chamber of Commerce discovers he needs to grow up fast when a rival gang starts selling opium in the Shanghai of 1928 in Zhao Cong’s well appointed action streamer, The Mob (龙虎制霸, lónghǔ zhì bà). There can be few settings as enticing as pre-war Shanghai and Zhao certainly makes the most of his budget with beautifully designed sets along with a number of stylish action sequences and a narrative that’s a little more interesting that your average streamer.

The interesting thing is that the bad guys are the ones who want to work with foreigners, particularly the British, to flood Shanghai with opium which is obviously very bad for everyone and will cause a series of social problems the good gangs and the authorities don’t really want to deal with not least because it will disrupt their other business and increase foreign influence in the city. Evil gangster Zhao Longde doesn’t care about that though and is already making trouble that is only exacerbated by the return of his illegitimate son Yuyang from studying abroad. Yuyang has a serious chip on his shoulder about his relationship with his father and is jealous of Longde’s adopted son, Hai, who is just much better at this whole gangster thing and all thing’s considered the son Longde probably wants as opposed to Yuyang who can’t be trusted with anything.

Across town, Fang is also a feckless son but one on the side of the good guys in that his father is the current head of the Chamber of Commerce and dead against anyone trading opium in Shanghai. If they do, they’ll be kicked out and unable to do business in the city. Though the name sounds legitimate, it’s really just a forum to maintain equilibrium between the various gangs who control the local ports though the balance has already been destabilised with tension between Zhao Lin who runs swanky nightclub New World and Longde who apparently caused his brother to lose the use of his hand. Fang is drawn into the conflict when he comes to the defence of Hai when he’s attacked and outnumbered at New World.

They’re obviously on opposing sides, but the two men discover a respect for each other as fighters and men of honour. Hai is a loyal son to Longde and respected Yuyang out of loyalty to him but privately does not approve of some of the gang’s actions such as flouting the rules of the Chamber of Commerce, bumping off their rivals, and planning to take control of the local opium trade. Fang, meanwhile, is just really directionless and an overindulged little brother who spends all his time reading comic books and gambling on frog racing much to the disappointment of his father. But with all hell breaking loose in Shanghai, he has no choice but to step up to the plate and play his part as a member of the Tongmingtang to restore order and keep drugs out of Shanghai.

Interestingly enough, though perhaps just because it’s a streaming movie set firmly within the pre-Communist past, the film does not end with one of the familiar title cards explaining that justice was done and the wrongdoers punished but in fact justifies Fang’s violence as righteous and adds that he later joined the resistance movement against the Japanese (which sounds like a hook for another interesting film). In any case, Zhao includes plenty of twists and turns, betrayals and counter betrayals, while reserving the most interesting arc for the conflicted Hai who eventually shakes himself free of the sense of obligation he has to a gang that offends his sense of morality realising that like Fang he owes nothing to anyone and is free to make an individualistic choice as regards which side to be on. Fang’s sister Jiayue meanwhile is somewhat underused but is otherwise quite an imposing presence and certainly makes an impact with a hardline stance against the priggish Yuyang. Echoing the era of Heroic Bloodshed, Zhao lends the action an epic quality through his artfully designed set pieces including the rain soaked finale and an impressively staged assassination sequence intercut with scenes of a grieving family at a funeral.

The Mob is available now in the US on Digital courtesy of Well Go USA.

US trailer

Decoded (解密, Chen Sicheng, 2024)

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International geopolitics is reduced to a battle wits between two men, each in their way lonely exiles and perpetual outsiders in Chen Sicheng’s adaptation of the novel by Mai Jia, Decoded (解密, jiěmì). Originally an actor (and here making a meta self-cameo), Chen is best known as a director for the smash hit Detective Chinatown franchise which boasts both well-plotted mysteries and zany, lowbrow comedy. Decoded is a slightly different kettle of fish, displaying its own kind of whimsicality but also darker and stranger in its concentric enigmas.

The narrative’s timeline seems to be slightly hazy, but loosely follows an prodigious orphan born to a prominent family though his father, the black sheep, had already died before his mother too died in childbirth. A rather complicated set of circumstances led to Rong Jinzhen (Liu Haoran) being raised by an Austrian dream interpreter who for unexplained reasons kept him locked up in a small hut isolated from the world while teaching him all about dreams with the consequence that by the time the old man dies, 12-year-old Jinzhen is a strange boy with few social skills but a once-in-a-generation grasp of mathematics.

It’s this genius that sees him saved by distant relative Xiaolili (Daniel Wu) who was originally going to send him to an orphanage but decides adopt him instead. Jinzhen then gains early entry to university where he’s tutored by Liseiwicz, an exiled Polish professor who fled his homeland to escape persecution by the Nazis as a Jew. The film seemingly doesn’t mean to, but undermines this backstory through the casting of John Cusack who plays the part as all American and is not convincing as Polish man who ended up in China because he had nowhere else to go and is unable to return to his homeland thereby lessening the intended impact of his speeches about nationhood and patriotism which counter those Jinzheng has already been given by Xiaolili in addition to making him seem suspicious possibly long before she should. 

Nevertheless, this may also add to his sense of untrustworthiness and perhaps duplicitous treatment of Jinzheng which edges towards the exploitative in hoping to make use of his genius for his research into the evolution of computing. In the early days of the Chinese civil war, Liseiwicz is approached by agents from the PLA who want him to decode a telegram that may save thousands of lives. Liseiwicz claims he doesn’t want to get into politics though superficially supportive of the Communist cause only to later be exposed as a collaborator with the KMT on his return to the US where he designs encryption codes to be used between Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists in Taiwan and the US troops backing him in the hope he’ll retake China and end Communism in Asia. 

Of course, Jinzheng gets picked up by the CCP to work in their secret spy division in which he becomes a virtual prisoner forbidden from leaving the compound while expected to spend all of his time breaking codes such as those designed by Liseiwicz. In truth, it becomes a kind of game between the two but one that the guileless Jinzheng little understands. It takes it him an unreasonably long time to understand that Liseiwicz is just messing with his mind, sending him misinformation as a distraction intended to drive him mad culminating in dispatching a copy of the The Beatles’ I Am the Walrus in order both to disrupt his political consciousness with decadent Western pop music and drive him out of his mind as he struggles to understand how this nonsense verse about egg men and marine animals is supposed to relate to the code.

Then again, there is something a little subversive in the celebration of Jinzheng’s ability to think about the box, instantly understanding that the correct answer to the entrance test is not to waste his time taking it because it’s obvious they’ve already cracked the code concerned. The use of dream interpretation taught to him by his adoptive Austrian father maybe simply be an ability to work things out on a deeper level of consciousness, but it’s also left him with a fragile mental state already unable to discern dream from reality. The strain of constant codebreaking further pushes him towards madness while he perhaps loses sight of his original mission, only later coming to realise that Xiaolili’s vision of nationhood was the correct one after all.

Though Chen appears to have been influenced by Christopher Nolan in his use of oneiric imagery, he crafts a number of beautifully designed, whimsical dream sequences some which later become hellish or strange but reflect an innate innocence in Jinzheng while disclosing to him something of the real world which he had not understood. It’s ironic in a sense that he’s forever trying to decode the world around him, such as in taking instructions from his adopted sister/cousin Biyu (Chen Yusi) on how to know if girls are interested which he nevertheless slightly misunderstands. The film goes to some surprisingly dark places such as in a brief sequence which Biyu and her mother seemingly if potentially anachronistically fall victim to the Cultural Revolution while Jinzheng is the victim of several assassination attempts by KMT agents well into the ‘60s. Even so his story emerges as tragedy more than triumph, a fine mind broken by the society around him and used as an unwitting tool in the nation’s path to perfecting an atomic bomb having seemingly decoded everything but his place within the world.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Mistress Dispeller (以爱之名, Elizabeth Lo, 2024)

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Can a relationship ever recover from infidelity? Elizabeth Lo’s mainly observational documentary follows one of China’s many “mistress dispellers”, which is to say an intermediary who attempts to halt affairs and repair families. While it’s tempting to view their existence as morally censorious, Teacher Wang’s approach at least leans towards empathy and as she says is geared towards encouraging the unfaithful partners to want to return to their spouse of their own volition rather than punishing them for what others may consider immoral behaviour or forcing them to do the “right” thing by staying in a marriage that may not be working.

In fact, she has a lot of empathy for the mistress at one point suggesting that she is most likely the person suffering the most in this situation because she is trapped in an incomplete, unfulfilling relationship which has no real possibility of coming to fruition. The conclusion she comes to about Mr Li’s mistress Feifei is that she is most likely just lonely while she herself later reflects that she gravitates towards relationships with unavailable men because of low self-esteem, feeling as if she does not really deserve a full relationship or all of someone’s love. 

The documentary in part links this sense of inadequacy to China’s contemporary marriage mores in which it is very much a buyer’s market and women are considered to have passed marriageable age in their mid-20s. 30-something Feifei feels she has little chance of striking a striking a connection with an eligible bachelor and is relegated to the realms of mistresses while brief flashes to dating agencies and parks where people place ads for potential matches suggest that divorcees and widowers with children maybe the only realistic options for a woman in her position. A lady answering the phone in a matchmaking agency remarks that she’s glad her client is based in Beijing because she’s simply too tall to find a willing match in the local area.

That aside, it might be difficult to see what Feifei sees in Mr Li, a typical middle-aged gentleman she describes as kind and affable. It doesn’t seem that money is a factor in their relationship, nor is she a kind of status symbol for Li who says that being with her is like being in the sun while it’s clear he’s become bored with the mundanity of domestic life. Though materially comfortable, the long married couple appear to have grown apart despite Mrs Li’s conviction that their relationship had previously been close and harmonious to the extent that they were the envy of their friends.

Of course, from her position there is a sense of humiliation and betrayal along with anxiety surrounding her living circumstances and husband’s future plans. She enlists Wang on her younger brother’s recommendation and submits herself to her process which involves introducing her as a “friend” and engineering a series of scenes which allow Teacher Wang to probe Mr Li to figure out his feelings surrounding his affair. In some ways, the process of the documentary is similar. Lo states that Mr Li and Feifei were brought on board believing they were taking part in a documentary about modern love but repeatedly reconfirmed their consent as the film evolved. 

Feifei herself begins to wonder if something’s afoot, feeling as if Teacher Wang, whom she believes to be Mr Li’s cousin, is somehow guiding them but also grateful that she seems to be helping her. We can sense the potential influence of the documentary in Teacher Wang’s anxiety on bringing the wife and the mistress together, explaining that people don’t generally agree to this and it’s not part of her usual process. Nevertheless, it rejects the potential sensationalism of the situation for a more rational discussion from each of the women’s perspectives bringing a sense of closure to both. This is the only real time we become aware of the film crew behind the camera which otherwise sits statically with incredible access to the discussions between all parties lending their honesty an uncanny quality. Even so, with the situation resolved in the best possible way, it seems that no one is really happy even as the Lis attempt to rebuild their relationship and Feifei attempts to move on. Lo hints at the pressures of the contemporary society from outdated patriarchal social codes, a lack of respect for women in general, lingering legacies of the One Child Policy, and the looming authoritarianism of the state, but finally comes down to three lonely people desperately seeking fulfilment but united only in their aloneness.

Mistress Dispeller had its world premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

A Long Shot (老枪, Gao Peng, 2023)

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The hero of Gao Peng’s A Long Shot (老枪, lǎo qiāng) is forever reminding himself to “regain your focus”, yet in other ways it’s something that he’s making an active choice not to do and that others wish he wouldn’t. Set amid the chaos of China’s mid-90s economic reforms, the film suggests that Xue Bing has little other option than to tune himself out and avoid being a direct part of the corruption all around him as he has little power to stop it.

In a prologue set five years before the main action, Xue Bing (Zu Feng) had been a sharpshooter on the national team but is told that he has experienced hearing loss which may affect his balance and is subsequently let go. The hearing loss is perhaps symbolic of the fact that Xue Bing does not listen to the lies and double talk around him and maintains an integrity that is nothing but irritating to his morally compromised colleagues. On the other hand, he later tells Xiao Jun (Zhou Zhengjie), a teenage boy to whom he’s become a kind of father figure, that staring at a bull’s eye all your life isn’t good for your eyes hinting at his problematic hyper focus in which he’s just trying to keep his head down and do the best job he can under the circumstances.

But the circumstances are grim for everyone. Now with shaggy hair and a look of disappointment in his eye, Xue Bing works as a security guard at a moribund ferroalloy factory where the workers haven’t been paid in years as the nation goes through a number of complex economic reforms that are changing the face of the nation and giving rise to a new class of wealthy elites who’ve gained their riches through immoral and exploitative means. With people not being paid, thefts are a common occurrence but the security guards have turned to taking bribes, tacitly turning a blind to equipment going missing if the thieves are willing and able to pay a small fee. Xue Bing doesn’t like to go along with this and avoids joining in, but is powerless against the other guards including his boss Chief Tian (Shao Bing). 

The film frames the factory as a microcosm of the wider society which has become a vicious circle of corruption. But on the other hand, the workers guards, and even in the management see themselves as taking what was rightfully theirs but has been unfairly denied them. The workers steal from their employer because their wages weren’t paid, the guards aren’t getting paid either so they extort the workers and rip off the company, while the management know the factory’s effectively bust so they’re asset stripping while they still can. Chief Tian runs into one of the thieves who’s since started a “trading company” having taken some cues from a Russian working at an equally moribund shipyard where he’s no longer monitored by the authorities and has been selling off warships as scrap hinting at the disintegration of post-war communism and the resulting capitalist free for all that followed. 

Xiao Jun, the son of a woman Xue Bing thinks he’s in a relationship with but the reality is somewhat ambiguous, is caught amid this crossfire as a young man coming of age in complicated times. He resents the corruption he sees around him and bonds with Xue Bing thinking he’s a straight shooter only to be disappointed by his defeated complicity which he also sees as a kind of unmanliness. Xiao Jun’s mother, Jin (Qin Hailu), had been trying to run her own business but later gets a job in a nightclub that seems to be sex work adjacent thanks to her relationship with another corrupt businessman, Mr Zhao. She remarks to Xue Bing that there are so many ways to earn a living these days she doesn’t understand why anyone would go back to the factory, laying bare the wholesale change in the society. Xiao Jun has taken up with a gang of seeming delinquents who frequently loot the factory complex, but even they are only taking what they think is theirs as one of the boy’s fathers was killed in a workplace accident and the family was only given a certificate of commendation rather than financial compensation for the father’s lost wages without which they are unable to support themselves. 

The guards have been told they’ll finally get paid after the company’s 40th anniversary celebrations, with corrupt manager Sun telling Tian he’ll need his help to keep the others in line when he presses him and is finally told they’ll only get two months’ worth of the back pay they’re owed. Xue Bing is told Sun was selling off the lathe machines in order to pay the workers, and it seems like he believes them naively falling for their greater good narrative while Xiao Jun seems on a collision with adult hypocrisy refusing to sign a false confession to get the managers off the hook. Gao lends Xue Bing’s world a greying hopelessness in which the only two choices are to close his eyes and ears or go down fighting, closing with a lengthy shootout in which firecrackers mingle with gunshots masking the sound of rebellion from a continually unheard underclass.

 A Long Shot screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.