Tag: Yan Ni

Blind Detective (盲探, Johnnie To, 2013)

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Ever get that feeling someone is looking at you, but actually they were looking at someone else? The mismatched cops at the centre of Jonnie To’s black comedy love farce Blind Detective (盲探) seem to encounter this phenomenon more often than most as To and screenwriter Wong Ka-Fai delight in waltzing the audience towards an unexpected conclusion filled with ironic symmetries and persistent doubling as the detectives role-play their way towards truths literal and emotional. 

Former policeman Johnston (Andrew Lau Tak-wah) lost his sight after ignoring an eye problem in order to solve his case and has been working as a kind of private detective ever since, looking into cold cases with reward money attached. His old buddies, however, have a habit of exploiting him as they do while trying to stop a series of sulphuric acid attacks unfairly denying him his payout by following him and then technically arresting the criminal “first” so his work doesn’t count. That is however how he first meets agile yet clueless heiress/struggling investigator Ho (Sammi Cheng Sau-man) who lives in a palatial flat left to her by her parents. Regarding him as the god of solving crime, Ho asks Johnston to help her solve a mystery which has plagued her since childhood in the disappearance of Minnie (Lang Yueting), an “unsociable” young girl with no friends who confessed to her that she was worried about becoming the kind of person who could kill for love as her mother and grandmother had done. Little Ho was frightened and stopped hanging out with Minnie even though she stood outside her apartment block just staring up at her in loneliness. Adult Ho feels guilty and ashamed, hoping she can make amends by finding out what happened to her friend. 

Like the earlier Mad Detective, Johnston has a special gift and unconventional investigational style which involves a lot of method acting and physical role-play even going to far as to force Ho into getting the same tattoo as one of the victims in a case he’s pursuing. His sightlessness at times allows him to see what others do not, but even his gaze is occasionally misdirected. Ironically enough he’d put off asking out his crush until after he finished his case only to then go blind, while she in turn had put off seeking out hers until after her competition only to lose sight of him, Johnston never realising that when he thought she was looking at him she was actually looking at someone else. The same thing happens with Ho and Minnie, Ho unaware of all the facts never realising there might have been another reason for Minnie’s behaviour. Frequently they look for one thing and find something else, accidentally uncovering a prolific cross-dressing cannibal caveman serial killer living alone in the woods surrounded by skeletons which turns out to have little relationship to their original case save for its tangential link in the killer’s preference for brokenhearted women. 

Everything is disguised as something else, the killer of the first case setting up the crime scene to look like his victims killed each other with no one else present while two brokenhearted souls stowaway in wardrobes hoping to reunite with lovers who have rejected them, the second later changing their appearance in order to get a second chance. Love does indeed make you do strange things, the sulphuric acid thrower apparently taking some kind of indirect revenge for his wife’s infidelity as he reveals through a manic phone call first berating and then forgiving her while randomly buying a big bottle helpfully marked “sulphuric acid” from a local supermarket. Yet in this screwball comedy throwback it takes a little while for the oblivious Johnston to realise that he’s fallen for his infatuated new partner who can’t quite be sure he hasn’t fallen for her bank balance instead. 

Despite the persistent darkness of serial killings and crimes of passions, Blind Detective is at heart a romantic comedy filled with absurdist, slapstick humour in which the heroes literally tango their way to emotional authenticity, a dance which in part at least requires each partner to look away from the other. To’s delightfully arch comical mystery romance is a tale of misdirected glances and buried truths but eventually allows its equally burdened detectives to step away from their personal baggage and embrace a happier future. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Our Shining Days (闪光少女, Wang Ran, 2017)

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Doesn’t everyone deserve their time to shine? For the students at the music conservatoire at the centre of Our Shining Days (闪光少女, Shǎnguāng Shàonǚ), a glittering future may be difficult to imagine. Another in the recent series of Chinese youth comedies, Wang Ran’s debut may clearly be inspired by Japanese anime, but adds a noticeably patriotic beat in making its heroes devotees of traditional music facing off against the “pretentious” threat of European classical. 

The academy is strictly divided along class lines with the snooty classical kids pretty much ruling the roost. When an actual fight breaks out between factions, the conservative headmaster sides with the classical club and erects a series of prison-style gates to confine the folkists to their own corridors while also banning them from staying too late or eating in their rooms. Airy fairy nerd Chen Jing (Xu Lu) hadn’t previously cared about the folk vs classical drama, but is pulled into it when she falls for handsome pianist Wang Wen (Luo Mingjie). That’s why she naively volunteers to be a page turner for him at a big concert, not quite understanding she’s being made fun of. Determined to prove herself to him, she decides to form a traditional folk ensemble but finds it difficult to get recruits, ending up with a group of four otaku girls everyone else is scared of who only agree on the condition that she buys them all plastic model kits every week. 

A true underdog story, Our Shining Days makes heroes of its “losers” whose uncool tastes have seen them roundly rejected not only by their fellow students but also by their families. Chen Jing is a talented Yangqin player, but conflicted in her ambivalence towards traditional Chinese music. Internalising a sense of shame about her niche interest, she half convinces herself that she’s only learned yangqin because her parents made her and is not truly invested in the instrument, which is why she immediately assumes they’ll dissolve the band as soon as her mission of winning Wang’s heart is over. 

The otaku students, however, rediscover a love of the admittedly fantastical music, giving it a cool modern edge inspired by their love of anime and games. The otaku live in the “second dimension” and have already more or less othered themselves, but begin to actively enjoy being part of the band along with the communal pleasure of making music together. Meanwhile, the scruffy Chen Jing begins learning a little about life from the sacred otaku texts of her new friends, only to take their shojo manga-style advice a little too seriously in deciding to make a public confession to Wang which brutally backfires. Wang is planning to go abroad to study classical music, he’s not interested in lowly yangqin players. 

The class drama reaches a crescendo when the conservative headmaster announces that as of the following year the school will cease admitting students playing traditional instruments altogether. Spurred on by Chen Jing and the otaku girls, the oppressed folkists finally find the strength to resist, rising to prove there is a viable ensemble for folk instruments to counter the “sophisticated” classicists. The classicists adopt the motto “let my music be the soundtrack of war”,  but the folkists are all about team effort and peaceful co-existence. When the local inspector reminds the headmaster there is no conflict in music and expresses disapproval of the school’s prison-like environment, the folk ensemble, rather than trying to defeat the classicists, come up with a “better” solution in which they can work together so that folk music can still be heard as part of the big end of year concert. 

A cheerful coming of age tale which ends in the message that there’s a place for everyone and that those who are generous of spirit are the likeliest to prosper and be happy as they do, Our Shining Days also has its share of high school drama as the scruffy Chen Jing gradually progresses to towards a more mature elegance while her best friend Li (Peng Yuchang) gets the courage to confess his feelings in a much less ostentatious manner. Subtly patriotic in its suggestion that traditional folk music is “better” than the false sophistication of pretentious Western classical, the central messages are of love, acceptance, and authenticity, insisting there’s a place for everyone who comes with an equally egalitarian spirit. 

Currently available to stream in the UK (and possibly other territories) via Netflix

Singapore release trailer (English subtitles)

Monster Hunt (捉妖記, Raman Hui, 2015)

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Monster Hunt posterA runaway box office hit and veritable pop culture phenomenon, you’d be forgiven for assuming that 2015’s Monster Hunt (捉妖記, Zhuō Yāo Jì) is nothing more than a slice of family friendly entertainment in the vein of a dozen other live-action/animation hybrid fantasy films. The monsters are cute, yes, and there is enough darkness here to rival Lord of the Rings, but there’s a little more going on under the surface of this otherwise heartwarming tale of a persecuted minority and its hidden princeling. A family drama of epic proportions, Monster Hunt speaks directly to China’s left behind children and to those who, perhaps, were worried their destiny had always been misplaced.

Set sometime in the distant fantasy past, Monster Hunt takes place in a universe in which men and Monsters co-exist but, owing to their defeat in a war, the Monsters have been forced back into the forests and mountains away from humankind many of whom no longer even believe they exist. However, there is fresh strife among the Monsters forcing a pregnant Queen to flee along with her retainers, straying into the human world in hope of saving her baby. Luckily she finds herself in a small village presided over by a kindly mayor with a limp, Tianyin (Jing Boran), who is also the son of a long missing Monster Hunter but much prefers domestic tasks such as cooking and sewing to hunting Monsters. The Queen manages to “transfer” her baby to Tianyin just before she dies, leaving him quite literally holding the baby assisted only by cynical bounty hunter Xiaolan (Bai Baihe).

Inspired by ancient folklore, Monster Hunt plays the chosen one trope to the max as Tianyin wrestles with his destiny while the baby, a true king displaced from his throne, awaits in ignorance. Like many contemporary fantasy tales, Monster Hunt also revels in subverting genre norms with its noticeably feminised hero. Tianyin is the son of a great warrior, but it’s his grandmother who practices kung fu and goes out looking for her long lost son, while Tianyin professes his love of domesticity, staying home cooking and sewing. His simplicity and softness is contrasted with the more masculine figure of the cynical Monster Hunter Xiaolan who becomes Tianyin’s casual love interest and the putative “father” in the loose family unit they form with the tiny baby radish-like figure they eventually christen Wuba.

The formation of a family unit in itself proves a problematic development for both Tianyin and Xiaolan who have both been abandoned by their own families and left to fend for themselves (with almost opposite results). Resentful at having been cast out by his apparently “heroic” father, Tianyin has definite views about the nature of fatherhood and the mistakes he does not wish to repeat with his own children while Xiaolan has grown wary of forming attachments altogether and strives to remind herself that she is only looking after Wuba until he’s big enough to sell on the Monster Hunter black market. Nevertheless, the pair cannot help becoming “accidental” parents even if they must first make a mistake they later need to rectify in trying to abandon their charge for financial gain. Tianyin “repeats” the “mistake” of his own father but finally comes to understand it for what it was – a father’s sacrifice of his paternal love to keep his child safe. Something that will certainly ring true for children who may be living apart from their own parents for reasons they don’t quite understand.

Yet a fairytale darkness is never far away as Tianyin and Xiaolan consider selling off little Wuba to a dodgy mahjong obsessed Monster fence (Tang Wei) who apparently knows how valuable he is but is planning to sell him to a local restaurant anyway. Despite the fact that everyone has forgotten Monsters exist, Monster meat is a delicacy reserved for the super rich (a subtle dig at China’s eat anything that can’t run faster than you philosophy ushered in by the sight of caged monkeys at the roadside) and little Wuba does look quite like a tasty daikon radish.

Cute monsters getting chopped up and eaten may be a horror too far for sensitive young children (if it weren’t for the fact the Monsters are all inspired by veggies Monster Hunt might be the greatest proselytising mechanism for vegetarianism the world has ever seen) but rest assured, little Wuba is quite the resourceful little tyke and he does after all have a grand destiny awaiting him. A tribute to unlikely heroes, gentle men, feisty women, and atypical families, Monster Hunt is an oddly subversive family friendly adventure and one which has clearly hit its mark in capturing the hearts of a whole generation who will doubtless be excited for the further adventures of Wuba as he moves closer towards his own Messianic destiny.

International trailer (English captions)