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Celebration of Chinese Cinema
By Justin Lowe
As the centennial of China’s film industry approaches, the vast majority of Chinese movies — ranging from silent classics, through the mid-century heyday of Mao’s nationalist cinema, up to the contemporary productions of famed “Fifth Generation” filmmakers such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige — still remains rarely screened in the West and only a small percentage has received international distribution, principally over the last two decades.
In an effort to introduce a broader audience to the last 50 years of Chinese film, China Century entertainment, an international distribution company formed in 1998, is presenting more than 30 titles from four famed Mainland studios, touring the U.S. in a program titled the “Celebration of Chinese Cinema.” Selections from the collection are making upcoming Bay Area appearances at the Rafael Film Center, and the 4 Star and Towne theaters. While program selections vary at individual cinemas, all will offer at least five films from the 1950s-2000, featuring fresh, newly subtitled prints. A delegation of studio executives, directors and actors will appear at film screenings, while opening and closing nights at the Rafael Film Center will feature discussions moderated by prominent scholars of contemporary Chinese culture.
Chris Berry, a U.C. Berkeley professor of film studies and editor of Perspectives on Chinese Cinema, will introduce the opening night film, New Year’s Sacrifice, and lead a conversation with Beijing Film Studio president Han San-ping. Closing night will be hosted by well-known author and U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism dean Orville Schell, and will feature an appearance by director Feng Xiaogang following the screening of his film, A Sigh.
As a representative of the maverick Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, Feng, 43, is probably the hottest ticket on the Bay Area tour. He is widely considered China’s most commercially adept contemporary director and recently finished shooting Big Shot’s Funeral in Beijing, a satire co-starring comic actor Ge You and Hong Kong’s Rosamund Kwan, along with Americans Donald Sutherland and Paul Mazursky. Be There or Be Square, his 1998 romantic comedy about Beijing transplants in Los Angeles, broke box office records as China’s highest-grossing domestic film. “Business is first. Second is art,” Feng has been quoted as saying and A Sigh, his most recent release, deftly affirms that adage.
Addressing the timely topics of sexual indiscretion, male mid-life crisis and marital fidelity, A Sigh has all the characteristics of a contemporary Chinese melodrama, carefully targeted to appeal to a broad demographic of open-minded urban residents, particularly women, with the added advantage of some semi-autobiographical salaciousness (lead actress Xu Fan is Feng’s young wife).
As A Sigh opens, middle-aged television scriptwriter Liang Yazhou (Zhang Guoli) is ensconced in a high-class Hainan seaside hotel, where he’s been sent by his producer, Liu, to complete the script for a new TV series. In an effort to help Liang overcome his paralyzing writer’s block, Liu assigns Li Xiaodan (Liu Pei), an attractive young film editor, to act as Liang’s gofer and research assistant on the teleplay.
Li worships Liang’s writing and spends more time gushing over her hero than assisting him. But Liang is enamored with Li’s beauty, youth and praise, and spontaneously decides — enroute home to his young daughter and hard-working dentist wife in Beijing — to make a fateful detour to Li’s one-room apartment. Guilty and sick with dread, Liang finally returns home to his family and their cramped apartment, lying to his wife, Song Xiaoying (Xu Fan), that the delay was caused by a meeting with investors.
Song immediately suspects that Liang’s been up to something and as she interrogates her husband, some of the motivation for his infidelity becomes apparent. Her cold, distant behavior, repeatedly rebuffing Liang’s affections, along with his frequent work-related absences from home, have put the marriage in deep-freeze. Song is distracted by her big plans for a spacious new apartment as she focuses obsessively on redecorating rather than responding to her intuition about Liang’s waywardness.
Liang, meanwhile, tries to forget his liaison with Li following their initial fling by burying himself in work. But after she is hospitalized when her boyfriend discovers her unfaithfulness and beats her up, Liang’s early remorse gives way as he succumbs to his own weakness and desire. Their affair takes on a new intensity as Liang attempts to maintain the love triangle, until Song inevitably discovers the truth and the couple’s marriage begins to tentatively unravel with a series of weepy confrontations, divorce negotiations and attempted reconciliations.
Feng presents these developments in an un-self-conscious, economic style, relying primarily on interior scenes to depict this sentimental narrative of domestic strife. Although the script by Wang Suo never approaches the level of tragedy imagined by Liang in his self-absorbed opening commentary (an unnecessarily maudlin and intrusive device that punctuates significant developments in the film), A Sigh’s cautionary tale offers something for everyone, providing an insightful interpretation of how China’s urban middle class is adapting to the unfamiliar pitfalls of an increasingly globalized culture.
Selections from the film series screening at all three Bay Area venues include Rickshaw Boy (1982), a tragedy about a peasant’s struggle to make a living as a rickshaw driver and raise a family in 1920s Beijing (based on the well-known story by Lao She), and The Spring Festival (1982), an inter-generational family drama set in northern China, focusing on the conflict between rural and contemporary urban values.
CAPTION: Scene from Feng Xiaogang’s A Sigh. Photos courtesy of Rafael Film Center
For “Celebration of Chinese Cinema” program information and showtimes, contact individual theaters: Rafael Film Center (Sept. 14-18, call 415/454-1222 or visit www.rafaelfilmcenter.org), 4 Star Theater (Sept. 16 and 21-27, 415/666-3788 or www.hkinsf.com/4star/), and the Towne Theater (Sept. 16-20, 408/998-3300 or www.cameracinemas.com).
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