Saturday, October 19, 2024

Green Night, Starring Fan Bingbing

Fan Bingbing got off easy compared to some celebrities that have been canceled in China, but her films were still effectively blacklisted. This one could get her canceled all over again. That doesn’t mean it is bad. To the contrary, good movies are more likely to be censored than derivative mediocrity. However, frank lesbian content is absolutely a no-no in Xi’s China (it is also frowned upon by most of his allies, including Putin’s Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah). Regardless, Fan has her best role in years (even before her blacklisting) in Han Shuai’s Green Night, which is now available on VOD.

Jin Xia works as a security-screener at the airport, but it is decidedly unsafe for the naturalized Chinese immigrant at home with her Korean husband, Lee Seung-hun. (Although their marriage is never explicitly explained, it seems likely his pastor helped “arrange” it.) Consequently, she has been trying to live a separate life—one that the unnamed “Green-Haired Girl” barges into.

Jin Xia rightly sensed something was amiss with her, because she is a full-time drug mule. Nevertheless, her supervisor insists on letting the green-coifed woman go. Perversely, Ms. Green invites herself “home” to Jin Xia’s not-secret-enough bolt-hole, to get replacement shoes for the ones she sacrificed to her diligence. From there, they embark on a series of nocturnal misadventures, somewhat in the tradition of John Landis’s
Into the Night, but much darker. In a further departure, after surviving nerve-wracking encounters with Jin Xia’s husband and the angry dealer employing the Green Hair, both women start developing a mutual sexual attraction.

So, good luck watching this anywhere in Mainland China. It is a shame, because this is easily Fan’s best work since
I Am Not Madame Bovary. She is both gritty and alluring as Jin Xia. Frankly, she looks appropriately exhausted from enduring a constant state of peril.

Lee Joo Young is also seductive, but in a disruptive and de-stabilizing way, like a darker (and more sexually ambiguous) Melanie Griffith in
Something Wild. She is trouble right from the start and steadily more so.

Cinematographers Mattias Delvaux and Kim Hyun-Seok (after Delvaux tested positive for Covid) nicely capture the late night sketchy urban vibe. However, Han struggles trying to parlay all the evocative atmosphere into suspense. Despite the co-leads’ bold and revealing performances, the film needs a stronger sense of direction.

Nevertheless,
Green Night is still well worth streaming for Fan’s remarkable comeback. She definitely makes viewers see life from Jin Xia’s perspective—and it is quite a tense experience. Recommended for Fan’s fans and anyone interested in feminist or LGBT cinema that does not let the message crowd out the story, Green Night is now available on VOD.