Asia Society: Perfect Life

Now connected by a modern rail link, traveling between Hong Kong and the Chinese city of Shenzhen is no big deal. Social mobility though, is far more elusive for two struggling Chinese women. One is real, while the other is fictional, but they both lead similar lives that will eventually bring them to the same corner of Shenzhen in Emily Tang’s Perfect Life, co-produced by Jia Zhangke, which screens this Friday at the Asia Society as part of its ongoing series of independent Chinese films.

Li’s mother pulled her out of school to help support her brother’s studies. Shortly thereafter, she abandoned her family. Dutifully, Li has taken care of her brother, but it is becoming increasingly clear their mother picked the wrong scholar in the family. Working as a maid in a hotel, Li meets a frequent guest obviously involved in something fishy. Though she rebuffs his advances, she agrees to shuttle a contraband painting to Shenzhen, where he promises to establish her in a new life. It is there Li has a brief encounter with Jenny.

Jenny Tse has not been any happier in go-go Hong Kong than Li has been in her dreary northern industrial town. Lured by the hope of profitable employment, Tse married the wrong man. Now she is battling depression and working crummy jobs while embroiled in various legal battles with her ex.

Life’s primary focus falls on Li’s story, with Tse’s appearances coming in relatively brief documentary interludes. Of course, the parallels between the two characters are clear. Neither has any real prospects to speak of, nor do they have any meaningful familial support.

Watching films like Life and those directed by co-producer Jia can be an ironic experience. Often they critique contemporary Communist China and its crony Capitalism with similar cinematic language used to decry western Capitalism by American and European filmmakers. Indeed, in Life Tang pointedly presents a modern China rife with class-based inequity and rampant sexism. Welcome to the new China everybody.

Carrying the bulk of the film on her shoulders, Yao Qianyu is a quietly riveting screen presence. Though still an attractive woman, we can see what a toll life has already taken on her. Audiences definitely feel for her, particularly considering how many of her woes are attributable to simply being a woman born in an economically depressed region.

Independent Chinese films like Life give one the impression China has perversely combined the worst aspects of Communism and Capitalism. Yet more than mere social criticism, Life is also heartrending drama, presented by Tang with unsparing intimacy. Highly recommended (if also somewhat demanding of viewers) it screens at the Asia Society on Manhattan’s elegant Park Avenue this coming Friday (3/19).

Asia Society: Walking on the Wild Side

Yes, there are Chinese indie road movies, but those cinematic byways tend to make for difficult traveling. Of course, being on the run from the law does not help. Three fugitive juvenile delinquents give idleness an especially bad name in writer-director Han Jie’s Walking on the Wild Side, one two films produced by Jia Zhangke that screens during the Asia Society’s current series of independent Chinese films.

In the morally ambiguous climate of Walking, boredom leads directly to tragedy. Three thuggish young men lay about their small mining town in China’s northern Shanxi province, enjoying aimless hedonism. Unfortunately, when Liu Liu, their ostensive leader, impulsively rapes a local girl it sets off a tragic cycle of vengeance. Suddenly facing the threat of prosecution, Liu Liu and his gang head north towards Mongolia, sinning and carousing as best they can along the way.

Of course, such reckless behavior is not sustainable. Like the self-destructive protagonist of Godard’s Breathless, it is clear they are rushing towards a bad end. The only question is whether they will all go down together or if either of Liu Liu’s running mates will bail out before it is too late.

Society, as reflected in Walking, is thoroughly lawless at all levels, from the causeless rebels on the lam to the mining company whose negligence cost the lives of many employees. Tradition and family structures seem to have largely lost their power of social control, leaving nothing in their place to hold people together. Han holds a mirror up to nature and finds it decidedly brutish and nihilistic. Indeed, there is a violent episode (in a school no less) that is really quite disturbing. Yet, it does not faze the loutish trio at all, which is the whole point of the film.

Walking is an excellent picture, but it makes few concessions to popular audiences. Drearily naturalistic, cinematographer presents a grim, washed out vision of contemporary Shanxi. Still, unlike many recent Chinese films marked by a languid impressionism, it has a strong narrative drive, with a dramatic story arc and clearly delineated plot points. Walking might be art cinema, but it is easy to follow.

Like Jia’s films as a director, Walking has a Cinema Vérité-like realism, with its convincing cast submerging themselves into the picture. Nobody really stands out because everyone seems so realistic. Dark and uncompromising, it is definitely a compelling critique of contemporary Chinese society. It screens at the Asia Society this coming Thursday (3/11) as part of the two month China’s Past, Present, Future on Film series.

Asia Society: Xiao Jia Going Home

Fenyang in China’s northern Shanxi province is historically known for producing liquor and poets. This is a distinct source of pride for celebrated filmmaker and Fenyang native son Jia Zhangke. Shortly after winning the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion Award, the formerly underground director returned to many of the Fenyang locations seen in his early films during a homecoming documented by Damien Ounouri in Xiao Jia Going Home (trailer here), which opens China's Past, Present, Future on Film, the Asia Society’s two month series of contemporary independent cinema from China.

Most of Jia’s early films were shot on the streets of Fenyang and they were largely distributed there too, primarily as bootleg videos traded on the black market. As a result, Jia is warmly received both the local media and his old friends and neighbors, many of whom appeared in those early films. At one point, Jia explains what independent film really means in China. Not only does it imply a lack of financial support from major media institutions, it also involves a disregard for state censorship. Of course, this last point is easier said than done. At one point, we hear Jia formulating strategies to deal with the censorship office, now that he is essentially halfway inside the system and halfway out.

Jia also defines Chinese independent film as a cinema that reflects the realities of life for everyday people and addresses taboos in order to “probe the limits of freedom.” The former impulse is particularly pronounced in Jia’s work, as Ounouri amply illustrates with several clips from the director’s oeuvre.

Home, which echoes the title of Jia’s early short Xiao Shan Going Home, often juxtaposes scenes from his Shanxi films with contemporary footage of the director revisiting those sites from his past. While these sequences might have greater significance to those already familiar with the Chinese auteur’s films, they provide a good sense of his work and how it was shaped by his environment.

Perhaps fittingly, Jia, the ironic chronicler of the effects of globalization in China, has become the toast of the international film scene. In fact, the director will be in New York this weekend to launch the Asia Society series (which also features two films he produced) and for a retrospective of his own films at MoMA. As a clear and concise introduction to Jia’s themes and concerns, it is an appropriate film to kick-off both series. It plays at the Asia Society this Saturday (3/6) afternoon, with Jia in attendance for a post-screening Q&A, while the Society’s independent Chinese film series continues with weekly screenings through April 16th.