Tag: Janine Chang Chun-ning

The Soul (緝魂, Cheng Wei-Hao, 2021)

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“Affection is the greatest obstacle on the path to success” according to the villain at the centre of Cheng Wei-Hao’s philosophical mystery, The Soul (緝魂, Jī Hún). Adapted from a science-fiction novel by Jiang Bo, Cheng’s near future tale has a series of questions to ask about legacy, family, love, and repression as its earnest investigator tries to come to terms with his oncoming end while living with treatment resistant cancer and trying to decide what is the best way to support his wife and unborn child in his impending absence. 

In 2032, police are called to the palatial estate of a local tycoon only to find him brutally murdered. Perhaps there’s nothing so shocking about that, powerful men have enemies, yet the strange thing is that Wang (Samuel Ku) was already dying of brain cancer and had a very short time left to live so there would seem to be little advantage in bumping him off early. The prime suspect is his disgruntled son Tien-yu (Erek Lin) who was seen leaving the mansion in a hurry and is known to bear a grudge against his father over his mother’s death while Wang’s much younger second wife Li Yen (Sun Anke) also identifies him as the killer. But there are definitely a few things which don’t add up here. Why is Wang’s business partner Wan named as his second choice as heir after Li Yen despite the rumours he had been having an affair with first wife Su-chen (Baijia Zhang), why are there security cameras in Li Yen’s bedroom, and why would a man with so little time left to live opt for an arranged marriage to an orphaned 20-year-old woman from one of the orphanages his philanthropic organisation supports?

Those are all questions which immediately present themselves to veteran investigator Liang (Chang Chen) whose own wife Pau (Janine Chang Chun-ning), also a policewoman, is pregnant with their child while he has just learnt that his cancer has resisted all treatment and may in fact be incurable. Deciding his remaining time may be best spent providing what he can for his family he asks his boss for his job back and specifically to be put on the Wang case, immediately homing in on the company’s radical new treatment for cancer through transplanting rejuvenated neurons directly into the brain. He begins to wonder what comes with it if you begin implanting neurons that belong to someone else but gets no reply from Wan in the middle of his sales pitch. 

Hinted at in the Chinese title the question that arises is that of the connection between soul and flesh and whether it becomes possible to achieve a kind of immortality through colonising brains in healthy bodies, an idea which might of course prove appealing to Liang if he were not so innately incorruptible. Then again as his wife says, perhaps it’s easier to die. It’s the ones left behind who have it hardest, suddenly left to deal with everything on their own. That might be why she finds herself tempted by their rather obvious conflict of interest in compromising her integrity to buy her husband a few more days while he wonders what the point of such a sacrifice might be.

Yet what we discover in the unhappy saga of the Wangs is both a megalomaniacal obsession with control that extends beyond one’s own lifetime and a tragic love story born of internalised shame that led to a lifetime of repression and unhappiness in the inability to be one’s authentic self. Liang describes the RNA treatment as an expression of the living’s obsession with the dead, while others describe it as “modern necromancy” oddly echoing the black magic which Su-chen, herself a neuroscientist, and her son had apparently been practicing in their intense resentment of Wang. Pau insists she’d rather believe a soul exists no matter in what form, but if you make division of yourself you may also face an unexpected existential threat born of your own internal conflicts and mutual desire for survival. A slow burn mystery, Cheng’s eerie drama has its share of hokum but nevertheless asks some pertinent questions about the nature of humanity in an increasingly technological age, what it is we leave behind and how it is we move forward (or not) with the process of letting go even as its ironic final moments provide a kind of justice emotional and literal in restoration of a family. 

The Invisible Guest (瞒天过海, Chen Zhuo, 2023)

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Prestige mystery thrillers are definitely having a moment at the Chinese box office and like last summer’s Lost in the Stars, The Invisible Guest (瞒天过海, mántiānguòhǎi) takes place in a fictional South East Asian nation among a largely Chinese community where the policemen mainly speak English and almost everyone else Mandarin. Like many similarly themed films that might partly be because there is a strong suggestion of normalised judicial corruption which would otherwise be a difficult sell for the Mainland censorship board even if very much on message in its anti-elitist themes in which it is repeatedly stated that money cannot in fact solve everything. 

Adapted from a Spanish film which was a huge hit on its Chinese release and recently remade in Korea under the title Confession, the film opens as a locked room mystery. A well-known architect, Minghao (Yin Zhung), who is also the adopted son of the nation’s only Chinese lawmaker, has been brutally murdered in a luxury hotel. Joanna (Chang Chun-ning), the wife of a filthy rich real estate magnate, has been arrested but maintains her innocence. She claims that they were attacked soon after entering the room and that she was temporarily knocked out waking up to find Minghao with his throat cut, the attacker vanished, and police kicking down the door.  

The twist is that she’s then approached by Zheng (Greg Hsu), a local cop, who offers to “help” her for a small fee promising to sort out all the problematic evidence against her if only she’s honest with him about what really happened in the room. Obviously, the depiction of such an openly corrupt law enforcement officer would not be possible on the Mainland which explains the international setting but it soon becomes clear that Joanna may not be a very reliable narrator and Zheng obviously knows a little more about what’s really going on than he pretends.

Joanna had only recently married her superwealthy husband whose business interests have been very badly affected by the scandal, suggesting at least that she may be a patsy at the centre of a corporate conspiracy with her husband’s firm possibly hoping to get rid of her or someone else’s using her to get to him. But the most essential message is that the rich and powerful shouldn’t have a right to assume that everything can be solved with money and they can get away with anything so long as they have financial means to pay for it. In a flashback which we can’t be sure is completely reliable, someone suggests that the victim’s life was meaningless and killing them no different from crushing an ant, a view somewhat validated by Zheng when he tells Joanna that he isn’t interested in people like that only people like her, wealthy. 

Conversely, a tangenital victim of the case later insists that you shouldn’t underestimate what poor people will do for their families because in the end that’s all they have. The film is sympathetic to those like them who do not have the means to face off against someone like Joanna who probably could, if she is not actually innocent as she claims, evade justice thanks to her vast wealth and social standing assuming her husband’s company don’t decide to drop her in it. There is also, however, the implication that Joanna was once herself poor and downtrodden and has been corrupted by her desire for the illusionary freedom of wealth, abandoning her integrity while carrying the innocent dream of buying an idyllic orchard where she could live in peace and comfort. 

Playing out in near realtime, Chen keeps the chamber drama tension high with frequent on-screen graphics reminding us that Joanna only has a couple of hours left to clear her name before the dossier of evidence against her will be presented to the prosecution and she’ll be charged with murder. Zheng says he can help but keeps pressing her not only for more money but more information, the “real” truth, rather than a favourable narrative though arguably the flow of hypotheses made more sense in the context of a lawyer prepping a client than a policeman probing for evidence in order to neutralise it as did the accused’s willingness to trust the person poking holes in their story. A kind of justice, at least, is done and not least poetic as the truth begins to emerge though the guilty parties or invisible guests of latent classism and social inequality are very much here to stay. 

The Invisible Guest is in UK cinemas now courtesy of CMC.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Abandoned (查無此心, Tseng Ying-ting, 2022)

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Just about everyone in Tseng Ying-ting’s psychological thriller The Abandoned (查無此心, Chá wú cǐ xīn) has been in some way left behind. The title most obviously refers to the body of a murdered woman unceremoniously dumped in a local river though as we later discover she wasn’t so much abandoned as returned, but the investigating officer is also battling her grief in feeling abandoned by her husband who took his own life and it could as well apply to the liminal status of migrant workers in Taiwan who have been largely abandoned by a society that is increasingly dependent on their labour. 

As policewoman Wu Jie (Janine Chang Chun-ning) points out to rookie Wei-shin, if she found a body she’d obviously call the police but if you can’t call the police because you’re afraid they’ll deport you you might have no other option than to make it go away. But the strange thing is that Waree’s body was left where it would be found and Jie will later claim that it is in a sense Waree who “saved” her by unwittingly frustrating her attempt to take her own life while consumed by grief and guilt over her husband’s death. Later it seems as if the killer of these women, each of whom has their heart and ring finger removed, intended to send the bodies back to their exploitative employers making a grim a point while leaving them with an impossible choice knowing that they can’t very well go to the police and risk undermining their entire business enterprise which relies on the labour of workers of who’ve either left the positions the visas they were granted were originally for or never had any in the first place.

Waree’s former boyfriend You-sheng (Ethan Juan) is left with just such a dilemma when the body of another woman, Yeti, is delivered to their factory calming the worried workers while secretly burying her himself in the mountains little knowing that a similar fate has befallen Waree whom he’s been looking for ever since she dropped out of contact as has her sister Saipin, also an undocumented worker from Thailand. The killer seems to target these women because he knows it’s unlikely anyone will look for them though they also have personal motives in their own sense of abandonment, resentful in feeling as if they’ve been deceived in love while unable to see how the other party may have felt trapped and exploited while their passport was held captive depriving them of the free choice to leave. 

As it turns out, the person who left Waree’s body in the water did it because they were worried she wouldn’t be able to return home, not wanting her to be disappeared in the way their employer might have wished her death hushed up like so many other anonymous workers whose families never hear of them again but at least acknowledged. Wu Jie is also unable to return home, mostly sleeping in the car directly below the bloodstained bullet hole under which her husband shot himself. Her boss ironically tells that if her heart remains in the car she’ll never escape, echoing the missing hearts of the murdered women taken as grim trophies by the heartless killer. 

Ironically enough, to solve the case Wu Jie must regain the desire to live finally facing her abandonment along with her grief and guilt for her inability to save her husband while working with the conflicted You-sheng who similarly feels both abandoned and guilty in the failure of his relationship with Waree whom he was reluctant to marry and might have saved if he had. Tseng aptly demonstrates the precarious position of undocumented migrant workers in Taiwan who are often exploited by their employers and rendered invisible by a society which largely treats them with disdain while left vulnerable to crime and violence in being unable to turn to the authorities for help. He also hints at a degree of misogyny present in the police force as Jie is at one point asked to leave the case as the higher ups don’t like the idea of two women working together while Jie simultaneously feels pressured to stay knowing that the situation is too complicated for an earnest rookie to manage on her own. Exploring the grimy underbelly of an otherwise prosperous nation, the film has only sympathy for those have in one way another been abandoned and can see little prospect of escape from their fear and loneliness. 

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

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Images: @Renaissance Films Limited. Love Me Tender Production Company