previously published on Asian Movie Pulse
While team sports, and especially fandom around them, tend to be influenced by their “native” culture and to project it further, the individual ones are usually simpler to decode because they exist everywhere in the same shape. Among them, martial arts tend to transcend the cultures most often and most fluidly, serve as a bridge between them and an accelerator of societal pluralism. Remember the karate craze in the West decades ago and closely observe the ongoing hype around kickboxing in Japan, for instance.
At first glance, the cultures of Lithuania and Taiwan could not be more apart, and Poland and Czech Republic don’t seem like proper “bridges” between them, so Jurgis Matulevičius’ “China Sea” seems like a very exotic co-production. But the fact that it came on top of the Critics’ Picks competition programme at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival surely means something.
Our protagonist Osvald (Marius Repsys) used to be a kickboxing champion who enjoyed most when he fought in the Far East. But after an incident, a bar fight in which he (probably accidentally) hit a woman who happened to be at the place, he got banned from federation and from fighting for life. His therapy and (sincere?) apology don’t help, so he is disgraced, with almost no friends and support. He lives in a room above the titular Taiwanese restaurant owned by his friend Ju-Long (Jag Huang of “Life of Pi” fame) and his family, the only place in the world he feels understood and accepted.
Osvald tries to improve his life any way he can. His old coach lets him clandestinely work with the club’s new prospect Angela, but that would also go south when she loses her first fight and her parents find out what is the reputation of one of the men in her corner. At therapy, he meets Skaiste (Severija Janušauskaite), a trophy girlfriend of a brutal Russian gangster nicknamed Tourist (Vaidotas Martinaitis), and sets on rescuing her. Also, since Ju-Long owes money to the gangsters due to his gambling habit, and Osvald, as a former champion, has some “street credit” with them, he tries to save his only friend by balancing between the parties. In situation like this, the question is not whether his life will come down, but when and with how much bang…
China Sea sports the gloomy aura of an Eastern European psychological drama based in a social realist codes of grey skies, drab buildings, depleted factories in town suburbs and the constant snowing. Even its genre “flavouring” is not particularly Oriental, but its noir elements combine flavours from the Continental Europe, Scandinavia and the post-Soviet countries, with a touch of movies that incorporate the Russian Mafia tropes, such as David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises”. All of that makes “China Sea” a quintessentially Lithuanian product, dealing with quintessentially Lithuanian problems of the formally, but not actually, completed transition from the East to the West, and the positioning in the new world of uncertainty when and where will the new Cold War between the West and the Russia heat up to the blazing temperatures.
So, what is the Taiwanese angle to the whole thing? The Taiwanese family (we also have Lu Yi-ching as the mother and Sonia Yuan as the sister) could be comfortably switched for a, for instance, Thai (on the grounds of kickboxing, the national sport there), Vietnamese (present in the Eastern Europe even before the fall of communism), or, simply, Chinese one. However, in the terms of dramaturgy, they are not just clichés, “token Asians”, or even means to secure a co-production, but an integral part of Matulevičius’ vision and Saule Bliuvaite’s (of last year’s Locarno laureate “Toxic” fame) script. The connection between Osvald and Ju-Long seems organic and genuine (also thanks to the actors’ efforts), as they both feel out of their place and out of their life, trapped somewhere where the chances of survival are low and of success even lower, where neither the weather nor the people are nice.
In the end, “China Sea” might not be for everybody’s taste because it demands tuning in to a very specific frequency that does not rely much on genre postulates (it is not a martial arts movie with training sequences, the only one, actually resembling a news story, is seen at the opening and serves to provide the context), but on a singular vision. It is very bleak and offers no chance for redemption, so it cannot be used as a motivational quote or a cautionary tale. But there is something inherently humane in it, something that can pack a punch to the liver and to the plexus, a flying knee landing directly on the chin to knock one down and out. And if we can handle the pain, we also learn to appreciate it, because it makes us stronger and wiser. Ultimately, “China Sea” shares the mission with the Shaolin monks and Samurai warriors. What can be more Asian than that, at least in the movies?
