Su-ang
is living proof of the brutality of China’s orphanages, but not for long. He is
slowly dying from the brain injuries he sustained while living in a provincial
facility as a teen. However, he plans to go out with a vengeful bang in Yang
Shu-peng’s Blood of Youth (trailer here), which screens
during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.
You
could also say Su-ang knows where the bodies are buried, because he just tipped
off the cops to the location of a corpse buried in the woods over a decade ago.
He also dropped a dime on a bank heist planned by Shen’s gang, then rather perversely
warned Shen the cops had the drop on him. He is definitely playing a dangerous
game, but he has an accomplice: Lin Qiao. He and Lin were orphans together and
now she is cellist the orchestra conducted by Li Zhimin, who happens to be
married to Su-ang’s doctor, Han Yu.
Of
course, there are no coincidences in Blood.
However, Su-ang, Yang, and his co-screenwriter Li Chenxi closely guard their
secrets until well into the third act. It is a dark and twisted tale copper
Zhang Jianyu will have to unravel the hard way. At least he will have a bit of
(possibly unethical) help from Dr. Han Yu.
Wow,
Chinese language cinema hates classical musicians. While not as spectacularly
odious as Michael Wang’s hammy opera singer in Nightfall, Guo Xiaodong is still all kinds of sinister as the
baton-wielding, sexually harassing Li. You can cut the tension and resentment
brewing between him and Yu Nan’s Han Yu with a blunt butter knife. On the other
hand, she develops weirdly ambiguous but compelling chemistry with both Zhang
Yi and Oho Ou, as Zhang and Su-ang, respectively.
