Tag: Ma Li

Yolo (热辣滚烫, Jia Ling, 2024)

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In the training footage which plays over the closing credits of Jia Ling’s YOLO (热辣滚烫, Rè là gǔntàng), someone asks her why she’s learning to draw and she replies that she’s trying to become a better version of herself. The same is very much true of the movie’s heroine who trying to rediscover her will to keep fighting in a world that seems to have beaten her down and destroyed her spirit. Inspired by Masaharu Take’s 2014 boxing drama 100 Yen Love, Jia’s film is kinder and less cynical in tone while also taking on a meta quality in documenting the actress’ own transformation.

Then again, the film opens with a sequence laying bare the petty prejudices that surround Leying (Jia Ling) as a woman in her 30s unemployed and still living with her parents. It’s never revealed what exactly caused her to leave the job she got after college though she explains that she was unable to get another because she finds it difficult to talk to people. What seems apparent is that she is likely living with a heavy depression that is all too often dismissed as mere laziness by those around her and most particularly her mean and judgmental older sister (Zhang Xiaofei). The crunch time comes when her cousin Doudou (Yang Zi) who works for a TV company producing a reality programme about finding jobs for people who for various reasons struggle to get one, tries to bamboozle her into appearing on the show by turning up with a camera for an impromptu family intervention before even asking her if she wanted to take part.

In the attitudes of her family and most particularly the TV show which is ironically called “Find Yourself”, there is a degree of fat shaming in which Leying is treated in certain ways just because of her weight which is assumed be the outward manifestation of her problems. Doudou’s previous guest on the show had been a man who was obese and had mobility issues so they got him a job posing as Buddha for photos. It’s tempting to read Leying’s transformation as complicity with culturally defined notions of feminine beauty and ideal body shape, but the point really is that Leying is unhappy and as a people pleaser with low self-esteem unable to care for herself until she discovers boxing and literally learns to fight back. It is therefore also a little bit awkward that her first steps towards self-care are taken in order to look after a man, insecure boxer Hao Kun (Lei Jiayin), as she tries to help him achieve his dream while allowing him to mooch off her even though he treats her poorly.

Nevertheless, it’s seeing him give up without at fight that eventually spurs her on to start fighting back by taking up boxing herself and surprising those around her with her seriousness and determination. Asked why she’s doing it, she says that she just wants to win for once and eventually comes around to the idea of winning in her own way which doesn’t necessarily mean being named as the champion or beating someone else but holding her own and staying in the fight. What she regains is self-confidence and self-respect, no longer a willing doormat accepting whatever humiliation comes her way to avoid upsetting someone else but standing up for herself and gaining the courage to say no to things she doesn’t want to do. 

There is something quite moving in witnessing the actual transformation of actress Jia Ling throughout the credits sequence and most particularly when she comes to film the scene in which she walks parallel with her old self and has to turn back because it’s too much for her on a personal level. Jia shows us just how unhappy and hopeless Leying had become because of the way the world treated her, but also how singleminded pursuit of her goal gave her a new sense of purpose and a means of fighting back that showed her she could win in her own way when it came to life as well as in the ring. Swapping the grimness of Take’s original for something more broadly inspirational, Jia nevertheless hints at the prejudices of the contemporary society and its money-loving superficiality while simultaneously allowing her heroine to find and occupy her own space born of her own individual happiness rather than the acquisition of things other people think she should want but actually does not.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Article 20 (第二十条, Zhang Yimou, 2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

International trailer (English subtitles)

Godspeed (人生路不熟, Yi Xiaoxing, 2023)

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An earnest young man does everything he can to try and impress his traditionalist father-in-law-to-be but just can’t seem to catch break in Yi Xiaoxing’s charming road trip comedy, Godspeed (人生路不熟, rénshēnglùbùshú). Seemingly a representative of contemporary youth who find themselves facing pressure from above with not only disapproving parents but exploitative bosses breathing down their necks, Yifan (Fan Chengcheng) is a classic mild mannered guy who’s been beaten down and bullied all his life but finally finds the courage to stand up for himself while battling to prove his worth to his girlfriend’s dad. 

The reason Donghai (Qiao Shan) objects to Yifan is at heart the obvious one that he can’t really accept the idea of his daughter getting married and in the end no man will ever be good enough to change his mind. But it’s also true that truck driver Donghai is an old fashioned man’s man with very strong ideas of traditional masculinity that Yifan is never going to live up to. Tall, skinny, and a glasses wearer, Yifan is a programmer at a games studio where he’s exploited by their smarmy boss who instantly turns down the game he’s made himself and tells him to pirate the latest successful games from other companies and rip them off instead. His problem is that Donghai thinks games are “immature” so his girlfriend Weiyu (Zhang Jinyi) has advised him to be economical with the truth when her father inevitably asks about his career prospects. 

It has to be said that it’s not practical to lie about something as fundamental as a job when you’re intending on forging a longterm relationship with someone, but Yifan is very focussed on the present moment and at least making a good impression on Donghai so that he’ll accept him as a son-in-law. In fact, Yifan hasn’t actually proposed yet and was planning on doing it after meeting the parents and attending the 80th birthday celebrations of Weiyu’s grandfather but things get off to a bad start when he accidentally locks Donghai in a butcher’s freezer after minor misunderstanding causing him to become fused with some giant slabs of pork. Donghai doesn’t like his “childish” fashion sense, so Yifai switches to smart shirts and trousers to try to please him but is never really sure if Donghai appreciates the way he’s changing to live up to his idea of “maturity” or in fact thinks less of him for it in his infinite desire to please. 

“You’re going the wrong way,” Weiyu’s mother Meimei (Ma Li) tries to tell Donghai in a more literal sense as she and Weiyu end up taking their car with Yifan and Donghai in the truck because Donghai insisted there wasn’t enough room for Yifan and the family dog. Donghai is afraid that Weiyu will “go the wrong way” with a man like Yifan, but is also going down a dangerous road himself in refusing to accept that his daughter has grown up and can make her own decisions as regards her romantic future. He wanted her to marry childhood friend Guang (Chan Yuen) who has since become incredibly wealthy, but even he is later exposed as a poser who has also “lied” about his financial circumstances in what seems to be an ongoing rebuke of the obnoxious superrich also exemplified by Donghai’s arrogant frenemy and his high tech caravan not to mention spoilt grandson with a Western name. 

Yet what Yifan comes to realise is that there is no “right way” except his own and it’s time for him to stop simply accepting the injustices of the world around him as Donghai has also been doing in appeasing a gang of petrol thieves who’ve been terrorising trucker society for the last few years. Together, they each begin to break free of their decade’s long inertia, Yifan deciding to be his own man and a “company owner” after all and Donghai embracing the freedom of retirement and the open road on going on a second road trip honeymoon with Meimei. The older generation has to learn to let the other one go, stepping back and getting out of the way of their children’s happiness, while simultaneously regaining a kind of independence to start a new life of their own. Flat out hilarious in its improbable mishaps but also poignant and heartfelt in its central relationships, the film’s zany sense of optimism and possibility become a winning combination as Yifan discovers the courage to step into himself and be his own man no longer beholden to a bullying society.

International trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

Too Cool to Kill (这个杀手不太冷静, Xing Wenxiong, 2022)

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Fantasy and reality begin to blur for a jobbing actor suddenly offered a leading role in an experimental hitman movie in Xing Wenxiong’s meta take on Koki Mitani’s The Magic Hour, Too Cool to Kill (这个杀手不太冷静, Zhè ge Shāshǒu Bú Tài Lěngjìng). A veteran comic actor, Wei Xiang like his character is also playing his first leading role and tearfully thanks the crew for the opportunity in a moment of behind the scenes footage playing over the ending credits proving that there might be “method” in the madness as his utterly guileless hero continues to “act” in a drama that is all too real. 

Big time gangster Harvey of the Magic Gang (Chen Minghao) is currently being targeted by rival outfit Movement. Top hitman Karl (Ai Lun) has been sent to assassinate him, but is ironically caught in the explosion at the quarry Harvey has just opened, his bullet merely grazing Harvey’s ear. Having no idea the injured worker was trying to kill him, Harvey plays the standup guy by visiting him in hospital and ironically swearing vengeance. Meanwhile, he’s also busy putting the squeeze on an actress he fancies, Milan (Ma Li), who has accepted his money to make a movie but has no intention of consenting to his terms. When Harvey threatens to fit Milan and her director brother Miller (Huang Cailun) with some concrete boots, she quickly counters that Karl is a personal friend of hers and she’ll certainly deliver him to Harvey if he gives her some time. But Milan was only bluffing and she doesn’t have enough time to flee the country before Harvey finds out, so she hatches on the idea of getting a random actor to play the part of “Karl the Killer” seeing as no one’s ever seen his face. 

The thing about Wei (Wei Xiang) is that he’s very earnest. He genuinely loves the craft of acting and is always trying to “improve” his performance such as cackling maniacally before he “dies” to show his utter contempt for death. All of this makes him quite irritating on set, but also the perfect fall guy for Milan and Miller who are, somewhat darkly, aware that Wei is not likely to survive his encounter with Harvey which will buy them some time to get away. What they didn’t bank on was Wei’s utter commitment to the role. Because he thinks it’s just a movie, he isn’t scared at all and doesn’t realise there’s a chance Harvey’s guys will actually kill him. Thus he pulls a bunch of ultra-cool, James Bond-style moves assuming he’s improvising an action drama in which he’s the hero so technically can’t “die” or at least not until the final scene. The plan begins to backfire when Harvey is so impressed that he actually offers Wei, well “Karl”, a job in his gang which only leads to further intrigue. 

It may just be that Wei’s behaviour is otherwise so odd that no one really notices, but his constant references to being in a film almost go unacknowledged. While negotiating with an Italian mob boss, he confesses he left the gun they were meant to be selling behind because it was too heavy but they can just fill it in with “special effects” later, while often asking to go for a second take because he’s not convinced the “invisible” cameras captured his best angle. On his first appearance, Wei shows up dressed like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Later he reenacts a scene from Desperado and even dances along to Singing in the Rain demonstrating his true love of the movies if somewhat anachronously to the movie’s ambiguous setting, 

Xing later does something similar in suddenly cutting the CGI backgrounds to show us the small island promenade surrounded blue tarp as if laying bare the “magic of the movies”. Echoing Mitan’is original he sets most of the action in a quaint Mediterranean backlot that is indeed a “fake” world to begin with where earnest actor Wei is the only one who’s “real”. Gradually, Milan starts to fall for his guileless goodness, especially on learning that he’s also been playing a role in real life that he’s committed to completely out of kindness and compassion all of which has made her regret her callous decision to feed him to the sharks so she could get out of town. A tribute to movie-loving pros, Too Cool to Kill celebrates the “unreality” of the silver screen but also the sincerity of a try hard actor who finally gains the role he was born to play.

Too Cool to Kill is available digitally in the USA courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

Moon Man (独行月球, Zhang Chiyu, 2022)

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A diffident everyman battles loneliness and despair only to become a selfless sacrifice for a world that left him behind in the latest film from the Mahua FunAge gang, Moon Man (独行月球, Dúxíng Yuèqiú). Not quite the raucous comedy that Mahua FunAge has become known for with popular hits Never Say Die and Hello, Mrs. Money, Moon Man is a more contemplative affair adapted from a South Korean manhwa by Cho Seok and equal parts absurdist exploration of the human condition and cathartic post-pandemic dramedy that insists there is always a homecoming in one way or another. 

Yue Dugu (Shen Teng) is proud to refer to himself as a “middle man” in that he has deliberately cultivated the image of Mr. Average in an intense attempt never to stand out from the crowd. On applying for an engineering job on a space programme he’s told the position has been filled but there’s an opening in maintenance. Yue didn’t really want to take it but does, as we later learn, after falling in love at first sight with Xing (Ma Li), the commander of a mission set to save the Earth from a meteor strike some years in the future. Being the kind of guy he is, Yue never makes an attempt to get close to her but thinks his chance has finally come when the mission is concluded successfully though Xing doesn’t appear to even know he exists. He decides to write a long love letter while listening to romantic music and consequently misses all of the alarms alerting him to the fact that something has gone very wrong, the mission is being aborted, and they all need to evacuate as soon as possible. Left behind as the rockets take off he can only look on in horror as a meteor strikes the Earth leading him to believe he is the sole survivor of the human race. 

Of course, that turns out not quite to be the truth. What starts out as Robinson Crusoe quickly becomes The Truman Show as Xing, who has found safe refuge on a nearby space base, realises someone was left behind and plans to livestream their daily life to give hope to the survivors on Earth who are now living a dismal post-apocalyptic existence underground. Recruiting a former live-streaming king, they try to set Yue up as an idealised propaganda hero but, as they are unable to communicate with him, Yue still thinks he’s the last of his kind and his behaviour cannot really be called inspirational seeing as he spends most of his time trying to crack the code to enter Xing’s quarters and having dinner with a mannequin he’s pasted her face on. Meanwhile, he’s also discovered that he’s not quite as alone as he thought but is trapped with a very angry kangaroo left behind by a research team. 

Yue was a lonely man before, but begins to experience true despair while quite literally alone on the moon wondering what the point of his life is especially if, as he assumes, Xing is no longer in this world. He contemplates suicide and then, after hearing radio static and coming to believe there may be someone else out there comes into his own trying to plot his escape by thinking outside of the box and proving himself a talented scientist. Struck again by despair he realises that cure for loneliness is knowing there’s someone there to keep the light on for you to guide you home only to see the Earth light up with a message intended to read “you are not alone” but which accidentally reads “you are no one” reinforcing Yue’s everyman status as a middle of the road guy who shouldered the burden that was handed to him and set out to save the world all while locked outside of it. 

Yue’s accidental heroism begins to soften Xing’s austerity as she gradually falls for this “awkward” man, while he learns to step up to the plate to protect her and the rest of humanity all of which lends hope to those trapped in the bowels of the Earth and encourages them to begin rebuilding even if at great personal cost. Shifting into Armageddon territory, it’s a nobody who finally saves the world in a final act of selfless heroism. Over the past few years, many may have felt as if they were alone on the moon or found themselves trying to parse grief on a mass scale while mourning the world they knew which had been so abruptly taken from them. Yet as the final title card puts it, the universe is vast, “we will meet again” and there will always be a homecoming in one way or another. Boasting excellent production values including some adorable animated sequences, Moon Man is a strangely cathartic experience filled with zany humour but also genuine hope for brighter future on the other side of the darkness. 

Moon Man is in UK cinemas now.

Original trailer (Simplified Chinese subtitles only)

Give Me Five (哥，你好, Zhang Luan, 2022)

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A struggling 30-year-old begins to repair his relationship with the difficult father he believed never liked him after being unexpectedly thrown back to the past and almost erasing himself from history in Zhang Luan’s sci-fi-inflected tale of filiality, Give Me Five (哥，你好, gē nǐhǎo). What begins as a Chinese riff on Back to the Future eventually skews closer to recent hit Hi, Mom which the Chinese title subtly echoes as the hero comes to appreciate the power of maternal love and sacrifice through bonding with the younger versions of his parents. 

Now 30 years old, Xiaowu (Chang Yuan) explains that he was long estranged from his grumpy father Wu Hongqi (Wei Xiang) and rarely visited him but has since become his main carer now that he is living with Alzheimer’s. Xiaowu makes his living as an e-sports entrepreneur which is not something former engineer Hongqi can well understand and in truth Xioawu doesn’t seem to be that successful as he’s been putting off proposing to longterm girlfriend Huahua because of an anxiety about his finances. When Hongqi suddenly jumps off a bridge for no apparent reason and ends up in a coma, Xiaowu is at first oddly pleased and immediately begins raiding his office looking for his bankbooks only to find a mysterious ring and an old diary penned by his mother who died when he was a baby. Putting the ring on sends him back to 1986 where he manages to mess up his parents’ meet cute, endangering his own existence. In order to put things right he has to go back in time Marty McFly-style to ensure his mum and dad fall in love just like they were supposed to. 

Back to the Future is a film from the 1980s expressing nostalgia for an idealised 1950s small-town America. Give Me Five to a degree romanticises the China of the mid-1980s but does so from an entirely different angle than the recent trend in 80s nostalgia which has taken hold in the West in that, other than a brief romantic moment featuring Teresa Teng’s Tian Mi Mi along with a few other retro hits, it is largely uninterested in pop culture or revisiting childhood memories but is attempting to draw a comparison between China before economic reform and the ultra-capitalist society of today. In what some might see as a simpler time, Xiaowu’s mother Daliu (Ma Li) is, as she’s fond of saying, a “model worker” in a factory which is in danger of closure while the “Biff” character, Qiang (Jia Bing), is a former employee who was dismissed for stealing coal. Having become wealthy after almost certainly doing something dodgy in Hong Kong he’s returned with a prominent Cantonese accent to buy the factory as part of a public-private partnership. A feisty young woman, Daliu sends him packing insisting she won’t let anyone disadvantage her fellow workers. 

The comparison is further borne out by the melancholy figure of Qin (Huang Yuntong) who dated Hongqi after getting the meet cute that was supposed to go to Daliu but thew him over for the promise of riches with Qiang only to be left lonely in her old age having unwisely betrayed love for material gain. Meanwhile, there’s an interestingly progressive element to the relationship between Daliu and Hongqi in which Hongqi is somewhat feminised as the domestic partner cooking and shopping for his wife while Daliu is the uncompromising model worker as she proves during a high impact welding competition while eight months pregnant. The couple first fall in love talking over industrial plans with Daliu offering advice from the shop floor to help improve educated engineer Hongqi’s designs. While interacting with his parents before he was born, Xiaowu gains the familial experience he always felt he lacked in being able to share a family meal while touched by the love that existed between his mother and father and the knowledge that his parents were at least blissfuly happy with each other even if it was only for a short time. 

Xiaowu had been resentful of his father that he never really told him how his mother died. He decides to try saving his mother’s life too and through his various experiences comes to an appreciation of maternal love not least through somehow being able to time travel into the womb to forge a more direct connection with her. In part an advocation for a more traditional filiality in which Xiaowu develops an understanding of the interplay between love and sacrifice between parent and child while coming to understand his relationship with his father after learning his family history, the film also offers a subtle rebuke against the consumerist society in idolising Daliu and her model worker attitude insisting that everything was better when people worked together for the good of all rather than for personal gain. It might be a slightly disingenuous message, Daliu’s factory life is indeed somewhat idealised, but there is something touching in Xiaowu’s eventual conversion and belated bonding with his heartbroken father. 

Give Me Five is in cinemas across the UK, Australia and New Zealand courtesy of CMC and Well Go USA in the US and Canada.

International trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

Manchurian Tiger (东北虎, Geng Jun, 2021)

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An adulterous bulldozer operator in north east China finds himself in conflict with a failed construction magnate when his wife insists he find a new home for their Alsatian before their baby arrives in Geng Jun’s dark comedy Manchurian Tiger (东北虎, dōngběihǔ). A Manchurian tiger does indeed appear at certain points of the film, a child at the zoo asking their grandfather why the rather morose beast does not roar only to receive the explanation that the tiger is all alone with no one to talk to. The child sadly reflects that it’s like the tiger is in prison, but the grandfather corrects them that it’s in there for its own good so that it can be protected, loved, and admired, but its plight still calls out to an emotionally wounded poet (Xu Gang) who is also no longer young and feels isolated and constrained by the world around him. 

As for bulldozer operator Xu (Zhang Yu) who it seems may once have been a teacher, his problems seem to lie more in the inability to reconcile his conflicting emotions towards his family. His wife Meiling (Ma Li) tells him to get rid of the dog because it’ll be too much for them when the new baby arrives and he complies but is also sickened when he’s met with only prices by the pound on trying to find it a new home. He unwisely decides to leave the dog with a local businessman, Ma (Zhang Zhiyong), but Ma slaughters it to curry favour with a pair of “collection agents” he hires to help him get back money he invested into a construction project that’s clearly gone south and in truth sounds like it may have been a scam to begin with. When the heartbroken Xu discovers the truth he vows revenge only for a strange sort of solidarity to arise between them in shared victimhood both bested by the problems of the modern society in the formerly industrial north east. 

Ma could try to make the case that he’s a victim too and he is in a sense but he’s also a conman as Xu later brands him. Even so he does seem to feel some remorse if not for eating Xu’s dog then at least for plunging his friends and family into financial ruin after they sunk their lifesavings into his project because they believed in him. As he puts it they all, he included, fell for the fantasy of the modern China believing they could all get rich quick only to be undercut by the ironic flip side when cost cutting and subpar materials prevent the apartment block from being finished leaving Ma high and dry unable to recoup his costs until the apartments can be sold. The debt collection agents he unwisely hires are just thuggish loansharks who then ask him for a hefty deposit, smashing up his car to make a point when he tries to use it as collateral. 

In essence it seems as if all Xu wants is to Ma to apologise to the spirit of his dog but Ma apparently values his pride above money and complains the price is too high while Xu resents the attempt to place a monetary value on his friend or imply that perhaps his own flesh also has a price. He’s clearly in a space of mental despair, reminding his mistress that like the tiger he’s no longer young and has exhausted all other opportunities to improve his life so the only thing he has left is his marriage. As his wife Meiling starts starts visiting several women around the local area after noticing the scent of perfume along with stray hairs on Xu’s clothes, it becomes clear he has had several affairs already and is seemingly being punished for his sexual transgressions which are perhaps an attempt to escape his own sense of imprisonment, as caged as the tiger by his familial responsibilities and humiliated by the inability to meet them.

Yet none of these men, not Xu, nor Ma, nor the dejected poet are going to roar because they’ve long since accepted their captivity and believe themselves already too old to risk escape. A fight eventually breaks out among Ma’s creditors when one suggests that the money should first be given to the young because they will spend it, keeping the money moving through an uncertain economy, while the old will save having learned to be cautious amid the vicissitudes of life in a rapidly changing society. Darkly comic and tinged with the fatalism of Sino-noir along with its jazzy score, Manchurian Tiger seems to suggest that the cage is infinite and the only escape lies in accepting its myriad disappointments. 

Manchurian Tiger screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival where it was presented in partnership with CineCina.

Festival trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © Blackfin Production

Never Say Die (羞羞的铁拳, Song Yang & Zhang Chiyu, 2017)

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Never say die posterBody swapping drama seems to have come back in style of late, though they’ve rarely been as funny as the surprisingly laugh out loud Chinese comedy Never Say Die (羞羞的铁拳, Xiūxiū de Tiěquán). Based on a stage play by the Chinese theatre company Mahua whose last effort Goodbye Mr. Loser did something similar only with time travel, Never Say Die is a story of never giving up, always getting even, and learning to understand yourself through someone else’s eyes.

Edison (Ai Lun) was once an MMA champion, but a scandal three years previously has left him disgraced and reduced to taking dives for his shady boss, Dong (Tian Yu). Edison has a reputation for being good at taking dives because he can make them look so “realistic”, and believes his special talent ought to earn him a few more dollars. Seconds after dramatically hitting the mat, Edison gets a call reminding him he’s late for a weigh-in at a “real” fight. When he gets there he’s confronted by a bulldog reporter, Xiao (Ma Li), who questions him about his history of taking bribes. Reacting angrily, Edison soon realises Xiao’s boyfriend is none other than top MMA fighter and arch-rival Wu Liang (Haowen Xue).

Just to make things more complicated, Xiao is also the daughter of Edison’s manager, Dong, whom she hates and is determined to expose for his corrupt dealings. Edison chases after Xiao when he and Dong discover her recording a very compromising conversation but after ignoring a warning sign the pair end up on a rooftop during a thunderstorm. Edison bumps into Xiao, kissing her by mistake and pushing her into the pool in which they then both get struck by lightning. Waking up in hospital, each of them discovers they’ve come back a little different than they remembered.

This being China with its relatively stringent censorship laws, the body gags are kept to a minimum with Xiao suddenly dropping her reporter’s poise for “manly” roughness and Edison becoming subtly effeminate. Both are horrified by the sudden colonisation of their own bodies and resentful that in order to look after it properly someone they intensely dislike is going to have to be very aware of their most intimate features. This is especially true of Edison who reacts to his new found femininity in the predictable way by fondling his own breasts and then having a fantastic time in a ladies’ only bathhouse (an extended set piece ironically set to YMCA).

The gag is simple enough but actors Ai Lun and Ma Li commit so totally to their new roles that the increasingly absurd situations ring true right up until the trio end up learning Kung Fu from a possibly gay, resentful deputy chief monk (Teng Shen) at a mountain retreat. Veering off from the standard rom-com route, Never Say Die makes a brief sojourn in revenge genre after Xiao finds out some unpleasant facts about Wu Liang (through being Edison) and decides she needs to get her own back by humiliating him in the MMA ring. Edison may have been a champ, but despite his physical training, Xiao is still an elegant female reporter who’s not exactly used to being in the middle of a fight.

Never Say Die does not manage to escape the inherently sexist bias of the gender swap movie, but it does its best to mitigate it. It is problematic, in one sense, that Xiao needs to “man up” to get revenge on her dreadful boyfriend and then is sidelined when it comes time for Edison finish the job for her, but on the other hand she is the more capable and pragmatic of the pair who teaches Edison how to get himself together whilst playing a supporting rather than leading role. Perhaps betraying its comedy stage show routes, the script may appear episodic and meandering but it’s all brought together in grand fashion at the end with nary a gag wasted. The lesson is that eventually you have to get off your high horse and really look at yourself and others whilst resolutely refusing to back down to dishonest bullies if you really want to earn the right to be happy in yourself. Hilarious and emotionally satisfying in equal measure, Never Say Die is an unexpected comic delight which proves surprisingly subversive even in its superficial innocence.

Currently on limited release in UK cinemas courtesy of Chopflix.

Original trailer (Mandarin, no subtitles)