Category: China

Successor (抓娃娃, Yan Fei & Peng Damo, 2024)

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Embodying the contradictions of the modern China, Successor (抓娃娃, zhuā wáwa), the latest from the FunAge team sees a billionaire father recreate a utopian vision of crushing poverty amid the socialist values of China pre the 90s reforms but only so that his son can develop a desire to become a capitalist fat cat. For all that, however, it’s also a reaction against micromanaging parents, life under oppressive state control, and a high pressure, conformist society obsessed with very narrowly defined visions of success that are increasingly at odds with what a younger generation might want.

The surprising thing is how easily the young boy, Jiye, is able to straddle these two worlds while only gradually beginning to realise that it’s odd his neighbours keep asking him complex maths questions and he’s always running into foreigners who conveniently want to know the way to the local post office. Ostensibly, the Ma family live in an old-fashioned courtyard that according to the sign over the front entrance was constructed in 1958. As the film opens, Jiye’s teacher has brought a wealthy man to their home, in fact the father of one of Jiye’s classmates, who offers to sponsor his education while each of them look mystified around the flat which seems to exist in a kind of time warp. Jiye’s father, Chenggang (Shen Teng), sends them the packing explaining that they live exactly as they want to and don’t need anyone’s help. 

Yet Jiye is fascinated by his friend’s iPad and aware of the world outside works even as his parents try live like it’s the 1960s, sitting round reading good socialist literature which is also recommend to Jiye by the man who owns the bookshop downstairs and is actually one of Changgang’s many hidden “teachers”. But unbeknownst to him, there’s a lift behind his parents’ closet door that leads to a huge control centre where his every move is being monitored. Chenggang is actually a fantastically wealthy businessman who wants Jiye to develop good character so that he can take over his business after getting into a prestigious university.

In a very high tech and invasive way, it’s a reflection of the confused ideology being forced on Jiye by unseen external forces. Once he’s a little older and able to see that his world is definitely not normal, he begins to feel as if some mysterious force is indeed controlling his life but attributes it to vague notions of fate or cosmos rather than wider authoritarianism or parental manipulation. Chenggang is convinced this is the proper way to educate his son, to give him both old-fashioned socialist values and a heathy desire to overcome his poverty and live in a fancy mansion. He feels this way in part due to his dissatisfaction with a grown-up son from a previous relationship who failed his exams and was sent to America in disgrace. Somewhat uncomfortably, one of the reasons Chenggang is so disappointed in Dajun (Zhang Zidong) who continues to crave his approval is that he’s gay and in a committed relationship with an American man who probably should have given more thought to his Chinese name. 

In order to keep up the pretence, Chenggang never tells Jiye that he has a half-brother though he does allow him to see his maternal grandparents on occasion though they, evidently very wealthy themselves, do not approve of Chenngang’s parenting and resent being unable to spoil their grandson in the way they’d like. Chenngang may have a point here, though his chief objection being that the little Jiye was already quite chubby from being relentlessly pampered lands in the realms of fat shaming rather than a serious questioning of indulgent parenting in the wake of the One Child Policy.. He didn’t want him to grow up to be selfish and entitled or to have a distorted sense of the value of money but also seems to have a conviction that the boy will just laugh and say thank you when he finds out his entire life has been a lie and his parents made him suffer needlessly when they were in reality vastly wealthy. 

But what Jiye emerges with is, perhaps surprisingly, a more wholesome sense of rebellion, stepping out from the cosseted false reality his parents had given him and prepared to chart his own course. In an undercutting of the apparent homophobia which surrounds Dajun, the film also refreshingly, and perhaps subversively given the usual treatment of LGBTQ+ themes in mainstream Chinese cinema, suggests that he has done the same and was right to do so validating his relationship with Peter while a kind of solidarity emerges between the brothers in the shared defiance of the path their parents had set down for them. Often hilarious in its surreal humour and penetrating in its satire, the film echoes a sense of dissatisfaction amid contemporary youth no longer so hung up on outdated ideology and craving more individual freedom in a society in which lives can ultimately feel oppressively micromanaged by shady, unseen forces.

International trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

Black Dog (狗阵, Guan Hu, 2024)

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When a dusty sign pops up in Guan Hu’s Black Dog (狗阵, gǒu zhèn) advertising the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a relic of a long forgotten past. On the edge of the Gobi desert, Chixa has a post-apocalyptic aesthetic, a kind of reverse frontier town for a society in retreat. It takes on an almost purgatorial quality for prodigal son Lang (Edward Peng Yu-Yan) who returns after spending nearly a decade in prison for an incident that seems like may not have been entirely his fault but for which he continues to face enmity and a petty vendetta from a local gangster/snake farmer Butcher Hu.

Lang himself is aligned with the stray dogs who have begun to reclaim the town which has long since been abandoned by industry. The moribund zoo where his father has taken to living is testament to the prosperity the area may once have had though now it’s a ghost town of China’s industrialising past strewn with the disused factories of Socialist era dealt a deathblow by the economic reforms of the ‘90s. Yet we’re also told that the reason the stray dogs must be expelled is so the town can be redeveloped and new factories take the place of the old which does not seem to hold the kind of promise for the townspeople one might expect. 

Constant references to the Olympics and its slogan “Live the Dream” only emphasise the irony. Geographically distant from Beijing, Chixa exists in an entirely different space from the Chinese capital and appears as if it were about to collapse in on itself. Half the town is plastered with demolition signs and in the end it’s the people who are displaced as much the dogs. Guan often rests on ominous visions of the strays standing on a small hilltop and then recalls the image in the film’s closing scenes as the dogs are replaced by townspeople watching a once in a generation total eclipse on the eve of the opening of the games.

With nothing much else to do, Lang, a former rockstar and motorcycle stuntman in the town’s more prosperous days which themselves even seem to echo the 1950s more than the late ‘90s, joins the campaign to beat the canines into retreat at the behest of local gangster Yao (played by director Jia Zhangke) but begins to identify and sympathise with them especially once it becomes obvious that the new regulations are exploiting dog owners by forcing them to pay to have their animals registered. Those who can’t or won’t have their pets confiscated, Lang silently rescuing one girl’s little’s pet pooch while her grandmother tries to argue with the dog catchers before they take them all to what is effectively a concentration camp for dogs. The film’s Chinese title is in fact “Dog Camp,” and it becomes clear that it’s Lang who’s stuck there, trapped by his past and the dismal realities of the socioeconomic conditions of late 2000s China.

Hoping to earn a little extra cash he decides to try catching a wanted fugitive, the Black Dog of the title who is mistakenly believed to have rabies only to end up bonding and identifying with it. At several points, Lang echoes the movements of the dog such as placing his head on the chest of his dying father as the crowd below his hospital room prepare to welcome the opening the Olympics via a large screen in the town square. His relationship with the dog begins to restore his sense of compassion and humanity while a tentative connection with a young woman equally trapped by her transient existence and toxic relationship with a fellow circus performer opens his eyes to new possibilities of a life of freedom on the open road no longer bound by the constraints of a society in flux. Elegantly lensed grainy photography and the occasional use of synth scores lend the film an elegiac, retro quality that recalls the cinema of the fifth generation while casting a subversive eye over the compromises of the modern China itself trapped by its past and trading on former glory from which stray dogs like Lang can find escape only by running from the pack. 

Black Dog is in UK cinemas from 30th August courtesy of CineAsia.

UK trailer (English subtitles)

A Place Called Silence (默杀, Sam Quah Boon Lip, 2024)

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Can the hammer of truth break the rock of silence? At the end of Sam Quah’s remake of his own 2022 film by the same name, A Place Called Silence (默杀, mò shā), you might ask if you really want to or if some secrets are best kept that way. Then again, Quah’s persistent focus on leaky roofs suggests the truth will out and that the slow drip of quietly collecting water will eventually erode even the strongest stone.

Though remade for the Mainland market, the film takes place in the fictional city of Doma which like many recent similarly themed films is ostensibly not located China but another area of South East Asia, the police uniforms and complex mix of languages and cultures strongly echoing those of the original Malaysian setting. This also extends to the increasingly Christianising imagery which leads back to a cult-like local charity that pedals a good book full of aphorisms landing somewhere between Confucius and Proverbs and are at best a superficial salve for the deeply rooted problems in what turns out to be a judgemental and classist society. 

At least, the reason no one challenges the increasingly extreme behaviour of school bully and queen bee Angie is because she’s the headmaster’s daughter. Angie has been relentlessly tormenting Tong largely because she has a disability and had until recently been taught in the special needs class. According to her mother, Han, Tong has been mute since birth and it’s in an attempt to get her a better education that she’s given up her job in accounting and taken a position as a cleaner at the school. Her mother’s profession is also another reason for Angie to bully Tong, though she also accuses Han of having seduced her father which does not appear to be true though his later admission to an “abuse of power” that gives Han leverage over him puts a different spin on the situation and does not cast him in a very good light. 

Neither does the state of disrepair at the school which has a persistently leaky roof that is at least according to handyman Zaifu structurally unsound and may cave in any minute. Some of the blame is placed on a recent tsunami which caused mass loss of life, and the school seems to be proud of itself for having taken in pupils from another institution that was swept away though they don’t appear to have been welcomed by everyone. When a pupil ends up dying because of Angie’s bullying, the headmaster delays calling for help in part it seems to evade a scandal while planning to simply bribe anyone who tries to look into the matter. 

In short, it’s not difficult to see why someone may feel they’d have to take the law into their hands to break the persistent silence that protects the wealthy and the powerful from the consequences of their actions. Though, truth be told, not everyone is very interested in the disappearance of the girls, Han is driven to distraction when she suspects that Tong has been abducted by a serial killer with a very particular motive who also seems to be aware of some secrets she herself had been keeping. Then again there are a lot of wilful silences, like that of Mrs Xu who later snaps that the whole building knew Han had suffered domestic violence yet apparently did nothing help her other than maintaining superficial politeness by avoiding bringing it up. 

Silence seems to be the only refuge for the bullied whether in school or the wider world for there’s little good in speaking up anyway. Tong tries to help a bullied friend, but her mother stops her, wary of their own need for silence and that Tong will simply become the next target which of course she does. Terrible things are done in the name of protection, but sometimes silence is necessary too and a means of atonement if not a weapon against life’s unfairness. An ambiguous mid-credits sequence somewhat muddies the waters in its implications though perhaps a concession to the censors demanding that crimes must be answered, but Quah otherwise depicts a hellish society of violence and powerlessness in which the only choices are silent complicity or murderous revenge.

A Place Called Silence is in UK cinemas now courtesy of CineAsia.

UK trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

The Umbrella Fairy (伞少女, Shen Jie, 2024) [Fantasia 2024]

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Should you be bound by the past or try to forge your own destiny? It might be an odd question seeing as the central thesis of Shen Jie’s gorgeously detailed animation The Umbrella Fairy (伞少女, sǎn shàonǚ) is that every object has a soul which has developed over its lifetime and often bound to whoever originally owned it. Though what these fairies, perhaps subversively, learn is that they have will of their and should not be bound by the desires of their former masters but are free to decide their destinies for themselves.

In typical folktale fashion, a block of black jade is split in two and used to create an umbrella, which implies protection, and sword which is itself somewhat cursed wreaking death and destruction where it is found. In our world, it seems that peace has prevailed but the princess has had to abdicate her kingdom meaning that she no longer feels fit to carry her most treasured possession, The Imperial Umbrella, and places it in a repository for relics along with the Sword. There a heartbroken Qingdai tries to get used to her new life among the similarly discarded fairies while fulfilling her former mistress’ orders that she should try to look after her sister Wanggui, spirit of the Black Sword. But Wanggui is hurt and vengeful. She resents the death of her former owner and vows revenge, threatening to plunge the nation back into chaos. 

Of course, the point of the sword and the umbrella is balance and the idea is they should work in work in harmony with neither in the ascendent. The vision of the outside world we get when Qingdai ventures off in search of the escaped Wanggui is of a wounded nation still trying to repair itself in much the same way as craftsmen Mo Yang attempts to repair the objects in the archive not so much restoring them to their former glory as adapting them for a new life. Yet we can see that objects are also a way for the living to mediate their sense of loss while embracing something that is permanent but not perhaps unchanging. Thus Qingdai and Mo Yang find themselves repairing a damaged flute the sound of which only brought pain to the Governor for it belonged to a musician who, again a little subversively, seems like he may have been more than a friend and gave his life in service of the Governor at the end of the war. Once repaired the flute has a different yet familiar sound and is passed on to a new owner to make with it what they will while accepting its legacy. 

In many ways it’s about taking the past with you, but also learning to let it go. The fairies think that they’re powerless. They can’t touch any solid objects and humans, even the ones they care so much about, cannot see them. But they do in fact have power and there are things they can do to shift the world, Qingdai’s unusual strength not withstanding. Under the guidance of Mo Yang, who becomes not quite a love interest but a kindred spirit, she begins to realise that she does have agency and is free to make her own decisions rathe than remain slavishly devoted to the desires of her former mistress. Wanggui perhaps learns something similar, rediscovering and redefining her purpose to determine to fight for something rather than flailing around in hurt and anger sowing the seeds of chaos wherever she goes. 

The again, the mystery villain is a cursed mirror who has centuries of pain in ironically being forever unseen for when people look into it they only wish to see themselves. Yet as Wanggui later says, there is something powerful in Qingdai’s surrounding herself with love while protecting all with her umbrella even if some in the outside world would be content to strip it for parts. Beautifully animated, the character design and aesthetic leans closer to Japanese anime than many recent Chinese animations which otherwise rooted themselves in cultural traditions such as ink painting and established mythology but otherwise spins a tale of learning to find oneself again in the wake of loss as a free spirit free from petty tyrannies and wider oppressions forever on your own journey fixing things as you go. 

The Umbrella Fairy screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Escaping Man (绑架毛乎乎, Wang Yichun, 2023)

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“Life isn’t much better on the outside,” according to Sia (Zeng Meihuizi), the heroine of Wang Yichun’s deliciously ironic dramedy, The Escaping Man (绑架毛乎乎). Escaping men is in part what she’s tried but otherwise failed to do while constrained by the socio-economic conditions and entrenched patriarchy of the modern China. All of the men in the film are, as many call them, “idiots”, but all things considered it might not necessarily be such a bad thing to be even if their guilelessness makes them vulnerable to the world around them albeit in much different ways to Sia.

At least its this boundless cheerfulness and inability to see the world’s darkness that caused Fluffy (Eric Zhang) to be rejected by his status-obsessed mother (Yan Ni) who seems to have got rich by becoming what in charitable terms might be called a motivational life coach though others might describe her as a cult leader. She’s determined to get Fluffy into an elite primary school so he can “win at the starting line,” a buzzword in the contemporary society which basically means engineering privilege for your child so they can elbow other kids out of the way before the race even starts. The irony is rammed home by the fact that Sia, who works as the family’s live-in nanny/housekeeper also has a daughter named “Fluffy” who is one of China’s left behind children living with her seemingly bedridden grandmother in the provinces while Sia is in the city earning money to support the family having apparently divorced her daughter’s father. 

20 years previously, Sia’s mother had accused her lover of rape and had him sent to prison where he’s remained ever since having apparently gone along with the legal process in the mistaken belief Sia would eventually clear up this misunderstanding. She later later says the police wouldn’t let her and that she was never actually interviewed, but also continues to insist that they live in a “law-based society,” and nothing can be done without evidence. On his release, Shengli (Jiang Wu) comes straight to find his former lover in order to confirm that he did not in fact rape her and their relationship was consensual which she agrees it was. This determination is symbolic of his romanticism in continuing to believe in his dream of love despite all he’s been through, convincing himself he can start again with Sia while she continues to manipulate him with the almost certainly false promise of a happy joint future.

But then you can’t really blame her. A little way into the film, Sia is dressed in a white outfit very similar to the one worn by her boss when she goes to see Fluffy in a school play in which, at his own request, he played a tree. Sia is every bit as a accomplished and she has a warm and loving relationship with Fluffy which seems to elude his haughty mother. Later in the film she reveals that she came third in the national university exams but was prevented from going because she was born in a small rural province rather than the big city like her employer Mrs Mao. The fates of the two women are easily interchangeable depending on the circumstances of their birth while Mrs Mao continues to wield her privilege to ensure Fluffy can win at the starting line despite her resentment towards him for his lack of academic acumen or the things that denote conventional success in the modern China. Though he is cheerful and kind, she sees these qualities as actively harmful to his future success rather than embracing the little ray of sunshine he actively is.

Then again, Fluffy’s guilelessness also leaves him vulnerable which is why he cheerfully walks off with Shengli when he agrees to Sia’s kidnap plot and even rejoices in the grave-like pit they’ve dug to keep him in rechristening it as his underground fortress. He’s so nice that he doesn’t even realise the other kids are bullying him for being “stupid” and thinks they’re his friends, just happy to be included in the game. In this way, he and Shengli are alike, a pair of hapless fools living in a world that’s nowhere near as good as they think it is. The irony is that though Shengli perhaps begins to wake up to the realities of his relationship with Sia, his last wish for Fluffy is that he get into the fancy primary school and win at the starting line so he won’t end up like him. Suddenly it seems ironic that Shengli was a breakdancer because in the end he cannot break free of the prison that is the modern China. Filled with a darkly comic humour, the film is a fierce critique of the inequalities of the contemporary society and gentle advocation for the right to just be nice in world in which kindness has become a character flaw.

The Escaping Man screens July 26 as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Three Old Boys (三叉戟, Gao Qunshu, 2024)

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In a surprising development of Chinese propaganda cinema, the once untouchable subject of police corruption has become a prominent feature albeit often in tales of righteous cops who stand up for real justice against the few bad apples who’ve allowed themselves to be corrupted by contemporary capitalism. Then again, its subject matter might explain why TV police procedural veteran Gao Qunshu’s Three Old Boys (三叉戟, sānchājǐ) has been languishing on the shelf since at least 2020 if it were not also for the inevitable effects of the pandemic. 

In any case, Gao’s film has a distinctly retro vibe with use of classic Chinese pop and very ‘70s soundtrack while its maverick cop heroes all dress in the fashions of 40 years previously. All born in the late 1960s, they are products of an even more authoritarian era and began their careers in the late 1980s. Like any other old cop movie, they bemoan the restrictions of the contemporary society and suggest modern notions of appropriate police behaviour prevent them from doing their jobs which has its degree of awkwardness on the one hand implying the modern police force is now not so hardline but also that it should be because that’s what gets the job done. 

As they contemplate retirement, the trio are offered positions as part of a new squad set up to tackle economic crimes and specifically international money laundering, the chief problem with being that the criminals had the effrontery to move the money out of China which is stealing from honest, hardworking, Chinese citizens aside from having already ripped them off with fraudulent investment schemes and good old-fashioned blackmail operations. Of course, as it turns out, the case has a connection to something that happened 20 years earlier and police officer Cui’s (Huang Zhizhong) desire for revenge on the gangster king pin, Huang Youfa (Jin Shijie), who caused the death of his younger brother murdered by gangster Donzgi who was then shot dead by fellow officer Big G (Jiang Wu). 

The convoluted narrative is heralded by a homeless man who takes the police chief hostage and mutters something about a sword of justice that sounds like something right out of a wuxia serial before being updated to the present day. The sword does actually make a reappearance and is wielded by Big G against a young whippersnapper out for revenge and to take care of what he sees as corruption in the earlier generation. When the trio are first put on the case, they are given a young rookie to help them because he’ll be able to do the tech stuff which the old guys probably can’t because their idea of policing was largely rooted in their fists and a capacity for intimidation. But this doesn’t really work with the youth of today who are for some reason fond of reminding them they aren’t their fathers so they don’t have to do what they say. This is particularly true of young thug Blondie who is caught between Ghost, the old gangster king, and Qing an upstart who is actually working for Huang but in pursuit of his own particular goals. 

Huang has his claws well and truly embedded in the modern society and has it seems manoeuvred favourable people into the police force ensuring that Cui and his team are neutered before they get the chance to do anything. Then again, Big G seems to have a very co-dependent relationship with Ghost who tells Blondie off for getting into a fight with him because cops are off limits. Nevertheless, the point is to dismantle Huang’s networks of influence to restore the integrity of the police force so they can enforce the law which exists for the protection of the people. It’s all rather confusing, but generally lightened by the intense action sequences designed by Yoo Sang-Seob which are also suitably retro but make good use of sword play along with a motorcycle chase. Perhaps ironically inspired by Hollywood hero cop dramas, the film ends with a regime change and a new photo being taken of the guys in their more modern uniforms receiving a commendation with the clear indication that something has been put to rest and the rebellion suggested by Qing’s attempt to steal power from the old quelled while the old boys seemingly decide that justice requires they put off their retirement just a little longer.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Hovering Blade (彷徨之刃, Chen Zhuo, 2024)

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The funny thing about Hovering Blade (彷徨之刃, pánghuáng zhī rèn) is that it gets away with suggesting that the police won’t investigate properly and is quite unexpectedly sympathetic towards the hero’s desire for first hand retribution, albeit with the caveat that the police are seen to be investigating but possibly hamstrung by otherwise sensible legislation about the age of criminal responsibility. The Keigo Higashino novel on which the film is based had also been rooted in a moral panic that children were deliberately committing heinous crimes in the knowledge they couldn’t legally be punished for them.

The perpetrators in this case are a little older, though the argument is that if they had been properly charged for an offence committed in childhood they wouldn’t have gone on to commit further crimes in the belief that they are above the law. One of the men feels that in fact he is because it’s clear his wealthy and influential father often clears up his messes for him. A secondary issue hints at an anxiety about the nature of justice given that minors who commit serious crimes such as rape or murder receive much lighter sentences meaning they could be free to live a relatively normal life in just a few short years when their victims will obviously have no such opportunity.

Of course, that’s the point. The implication is that these young people were not fully capable of understanding their actions and could still be rehabilitated to become upstanding members of society. But that might not seem right to the families of their victims such as Li Chanfeng (Wang Qianyuan), a doting single father whose only daughter was raped an murdered by a pair of young hooligans with the assistance of their bullied friend. With judicial progress slow, he receives a tip off from the instigators’ underling and pays a visit to one of the other men who assumes he’s a burglar and attacks him leading Chengfeng to beat him to death with a baseball bat while a video of his daughter’s rape plays on the computer screen. 

The film presumably gets away with its hints towards vigilanteism by the fact the police are right behind him despite having received no tip off. The lead officer is however himself conflicted in beginning to doubt he can provide real justice because of the way the law responds to children who commit crimes and appears to sympathise with Changfeng to the extend he appears reluctant to catch him. The TV news and the people watching it also seem to understand and approve of his quest and desire for vengeance with a woman even helping him hide from the police if also urging him to turn himself in.

But the kind of justice Changfeng wants is incredibly direct. He doesn’t want these men off the streets because he fears for other people’s daughters, but wants to ensure they can’t live the share of life his daughter has been denied. The fact that, if legal justice is served, they’d get out and still be young men pains him without end and only death will answer it. Chased by the police, he begs them to kill him too to release him from his torment. 

Chen Zhuo keeps the tension high with a series of exciting action sequences including one though a disused water park near a moribund hotel the bad guys have been using as hideout. The reasons for their crimes are never explained aside from the ringleader’s dependence on his father, though they are assumed to be mere devilment and rebellion, an attempt to circumvent the system knowing they can’t be held legally responsible for their actions.

The familiar series of title cards at the film’s conclusion explain that the police caught all the wrongdoers while they have also lowered the age of responsibility though it wouldn’t have made any difference in this case. A flashback to another trio of teens suggests that they are emboldened by the fact the law can’t touch them, but the bigger issue is likely to be the way the system is corrupted by money and unequal access to justice. Changfeng is after all a lowly construction worker and is largely left on his own with nothing left to live for but vengeance. His quest to kill the killer is also a quest to kill himself and end his suffering. Zhuo follows him through the grimness of this everyday life, the squalid rooms and his general sense of emptiness but finally returns to the world of state justice and apparently compassionate police only sorry that they couldn’t do more to protect their fellow citizens from the “bad kids” of a changing society.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Blind War (盲战, Chris Huo Suiqiang, 2022)

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After losing his sight in an explosion, a former swat officer must battle his way to the top of a human trafficking network in a fictional South East Asian nation in Chris Huo Suiqiang’s action drama, Blind War (盲战 máng zhàn). The film opens with an assault on justice, but the wounded cop must in effect turn vigilante to protect his daughter from a failure of the judicial process and pervasive misogyny in a culture in which women and girls can be sold at will while the corrupt police force do nothing.

In fact, the local cop Rama (Dou Dou) is played mostly for comic relief and is otherwise incredibly stupid, determined to nail blind former cop Dong (Andy On), whom he knows to be the father of a murdered girl from a neighbouring nation, as the king pin of the drug smuggling and people trafficking operation. Dong’s struggle runs concurrently with a succession drama in which Zha Kun (Qi Shenghan), son of drug dealer McQueen who was blown up in the dock in the opening courthouse sequence, seeks to cement his authority over the gang and get revenge on Cena (Yang Xing) for the death of father while she wants revenge on Dong for blowing up her husband. 

Dong is in fact dismissed from the police force in disgrace due to public opinion which blames him for the deaths of his men who were killed by the gang when he decided to check out a funny noise in the courthouse though he was only supposed to be guarding McQueen’s post-trial extradition. Having lost both his sight and his status as police officer, he begins to lose his mind becoming violent and paranoid with looking after his teenage daughter Yati (Cheng Sihan) his only other outlet. When she’s taken by the people traffickers, he’ll stop at nothing to get her back though it has to be said is not particularly interested in the other women or stopping the gang and in the company of Cena who is using him for her own revenge plot becomes increasingly corrupted in his willingness to use violence. 

Luckily, Dong was blessed with superior hearing to begin with and with the loss of his sight is largely able to navigate the world by ear alone, giving him an advantage over his opponents even if he can’t see them. The film sets him up with almost supernatural powers, at one point using a conveniently placed climbing rope to jump from one window to the apartment below. The fight scenes are often impressive and well choreographed, especially one tortuous sequence in which Dong is attached to Cena by chain and his position dictates whether or not she’s dunked in the water, and in terms of scale display impressive production values for a low budget streaming film.

Nevertheless, Dong is often eclipsed by the villainess, Cena whose tragic backstory makes her claim to vengeance just as valid as Dong’s as she battles to take down the gang that raped and controlled her after being sold by her father to a Thai warlord as a child. The local police seem to be much more interested in the drugs than the people trafficking, and Rama’s unintentionally ironic cries that Cena’s bumped off the only female officer they have, which is presumably why he had a crush on her, bares out the misogynistic attitudes in play in which female life is cheap and the only way to escape subjugation to oppress other women, like Dragon King (Qian Zhiyi), or to become crazed and cruel like Cena.

In any case, though it was never really in question, Dong’s fatherly devotion is eventually proved by his knowledge of his daughter which eventually enables him to save her, with the help of his loyal friend Yun (Wang Hanyang) who doesn’t really seem to mind that Dong went rogue and endangered his life while he’s been hanging around in the shadows the whole time in case anyone needs him. Perhaps in a concession to the censors, it’s clear that Dong is also paying for his transgressions though through his vigilante action is able to reclaim his position as a father and protector despite his career setbacks and the loss of his sight.

Blind War is available now in the US on Digital and Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA

Trailer (English subtitles)

I Love You, to the Moon, and Back (穿过月亮的旅行, Li Weiran, 2024)

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The economic realities of a changing mid-90s China conspire against a young couple who find themselves stranded in different cities and only able to meet up once a month for a night of passion in a hotel in Li Weiran’s wholesome romantic dramedy, I Love You, to the Moon, and Back (穿过月亮的旅行, chuānguò yuèliang de lǚxíng). Based on a novel by Chi Zijian and themed around the Mid-Autumn Festival, the film has a quirky, nostalgic quality but also a degree of poignancy amid the absurd journeys the lovers make in pursuit of their love.

Gradual flashbacks reveal that Wang Rui (Hu Xianshu) and Lin Xiushan (Zhang Zifeng) married in their home village but like many youngsters of the day left soon after for the city in search of work. Forced to leave school by his farmer father who saw no point in education, Wang Rui quickly finds works in construction but Xiushan, who was also forced to leave school early, is unable to find anything in Shenzhen and eventually takes a job in a dumpling factory in Guangzhou where she lives in workers dorms. Their plight reflects the economic reforms which were taking place throughout the 1990s giving rise to a new, much more capitalistic society as embodied by the employers who give Wang Rui an extra day off for lying on TV that they’re not exploiting him, and an obnoxious businessman Xiushan has the misfortune to sit opposite on the train who talks loudly on his mobile phone about an important deal and even drips cigarette ash all over the old lady next to him justifying himself that he doesn’t want to damage his expensive suit. 

By contrast, Xiushan and Wang Rui are incredibly frugal shopping mainly at markets with Wang Rui padding a fancy pair of shoes that are too big for him but available at a large discount. They save all their money for their monthly meetups which, as they’re both living in communal dorms, take place in cheap motels. Xiushan tries to ameliorate their grimness by covering the stained mattresses with her own sheets featuring a pattern of large sunflowers and blue skies that help her feel as if they’re back in the village lying down together in a pretty garden. To this extent it’s clear that living in the city in addition to so far apart has corrupted the innocence of their romantic connection. Xiushan was warned by her brother that if she wanted to hear Wang Rui’s harmonica playing she should put off going out with him because the romance will die once he’s won her, and it’s true enough that Wang Rui never plays the harmonica for her anymore in part because they’re now quite expensive and he’d rather save up his money for another cross-country visit. 

Xiushan’s decision to buy one for him with some money from an unexpected windfall is then an attempt to rescue their romantic connection which is now under threat because of their geographical displacement and economic oppression. On the train, however, she runs into another man who plays harmonica and has apparently been arrested for an undisclosed crime. Out of compassion she asks the policeman escorting him to allow the condemned man to play a song which he does and reduces the entire carriage to tears hinting at other sad stories of separated lovers in modern China. Wang Rui encounters something similar in a one armed man caring for a wife from whom he was separated who has since become ill and is apparently in love with someone else. His cynicism causes Wang Rui to doubt Xiushan, so paranoid that another man may take a liking to her that he puts back the pretty dress he’d intended to buy as a present and gets the much more temporary gift of a bunch of roses instead.

These respective choices of items might signal where they are in their relationship, but there’s still a pureness to their love that can’t be destroyed completely. Both unexpectedly given an extra day off for the Mid-Autumn Festival they decide to make surprise visits to other’s cities only to perpetually miss each other, stuck travelling back and forth by train and only able to make contact via “their” set of payphones for as long as their phonecards would allow before fate finally, if briefly, smiles on them under the light of the autumn moon. Charmingly quirky and hopelessly innocent, the film nevertheless captures something of the chaotic undulations of the mid-90s society in which youth is on the move but love it seems is standing still.

Original trailer (Simplified Chinese & English subtitles)

Unborn Soul (渡, Zhou Zhou, 2024)

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When a woman receives the news that her unborn child has a 70% chance of being born with a disability she finds herself confronted by a series of uncomfortable social attitudes and prejudices while trying to decide what is best both for herself and her child in Zhou Zhou’s empathetic drama, Unborn Soul (渡, dù). Touching on issues such as the demands of caring for someone with a profound disability and patriarchal notions of needing to continue the family line, the film sees its heroine more or less isolated in her refusal to be pressured into an abortion she isn’t convinced is the right decision. 

Though now relaxed, the legacy of the One Child Policy may in part be influencing the way people think about raising children and the ageing society with Qing’s father-in-law insisting on a “perfect child” to inherit their family name. Qing has been the sole carer for her 60-year-old uncle who has cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability since her grandmother died and it seems to be in the back of her mind to wonder who might be around to care for her child when she is no longer able to if they were indeed to be born with a disability that prevented them from living an independent life. Because of her closeness with her uncle, she has also has a more empathetic view of living with a disability than those around her and believes it is wrong to think that the baby is better off not being born having heard from him that he is glad to be alive.

Her husband however leans towards an abortion admitting that he is not really prepared to care for a disabled child for the rest of his life while his father outright objects to the idea of having someone with a disability in their family. Laying bare the patriarchal attitudes that surround her, Qing is essentially silenced by her husband and father-in-law who at one point says he’s sick of women like her who “can’t communicate” and won’t do what they’re told. Her husband is also in a sense trapped by this patriarchal system in that his father heavily pressures him to force his wife to have an abortion until she finally files for divorce. He has a clause put into the agreement that if Qing insists on going ahead with the pregnancy the child will have no connection to his family regardless of whether or not it is born with a disability. 

While all of this is going on, the baby seems to narrate its thoughts on the present drama while lamenting the suffering he feels himself to be causing to his mother. The question arises of whether or not the baby would wish to be born which is not a question anyone could answer and in any case perhaps he would end up feeling it would have been better to not to have been even if he were born able-bodied and with no intellectual disabilities. In an attempt to reassure herself, Qing visits a home for disabled adults and encounters a man with cerebral palsy who has got a job as a masseur and is living a fulfilling and independent life but is also confronted by the fact that many of these people have been abandoned by families who feared the stigma of disability. 

The implications of the film’s ending maybe slightly uncomfortable even if they reflect Qing’s nature as a true mother who thought only of her child even while the film is otherwise critical of an overly efficient medical system which tries to usher Qing towards an abortion without really considering that her choice to give birth to the child might be valid which also displays a lack of respect for the lives of disabled people. Shot in a classic 4:3 the film flits between theatricality and detachment while shifting into a strangely dreamlike aesthetic with its commentary from the unborn baby who certainly seems quite a sophisticated thinker for one so young. In any case, the decision is in a sense taken out of Qing’s hands leaving her with little choice other than to accept the hand that fate has dealt her while otherwise isolated from a cold and rational society.

Unborn Soul screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)