previously published on Asian Movie Pulse
It
has been more than two decades since Hong Kong has rejoined the
People's Republic of China, while maintaining its own political
system, autonomy, currency and, generally speaking, way of life. The
neighbouring Guangdong province has seen a huge economic developed
since then, but another phenomenon is on the rise. There is a large
number of people who commute on daily basis and therefore have double
identity of sorts. That topic needs to be addressed also in cinema
and the mainland Chinese first-time filmmaker Bai Xue does it
in a stunning fashion and with a lot of style in her feature debut
"The Crossing" ("Guo Chun Tian" in original). The
film premiered at the last year's edition of TIFF to a warm critical
reception and was shown on home turf at Pingyao International Film
Festival, where it scooped a couple of awards before heading to its
European premiere at Generation 14plus sidebar of Berlinale.
The
secret of its uniqueness is the angle its writer-director takes,
which is completely non-political. The trick she pulls is and old
one, but it serves the purpose: he chooses a 16 year old girl as his
protagonist. Her name is Peipei and she is from the mainland city of
Shenzhen, but goes to school in Hong Kong. Since she has always
wanted to see the snow, she wants to go to Japan with her best friend
Jo for the next winter holiday season and she has to work for it. The
minimal wage waitressing job does not pay that well, so she falls in
with a crowd of teenage smugglers led by the motherly figure Mrs Hua
to whom she is introduced by Jo's boyfriend Hao. For their iPhone
smuggling scheme she is a perfect asset: nobody suspects a girl in a
high school uniform who commutes daily, but sooner rather than later
her life of crime will affect her relationships with the people in
her environment on the both sides of the (administrative) border.
The
choice of the protagonist's age is not just utilitarian in the way to
avoid the inconvenient political questions, but it also opens more
universal dichotomies in the terms of age (16 is the age when most of
the people in Hong Kong start working, at least part-time, which
changes their perception of life more to the adult side) and class.
Simply put, a mainland student in Hong Kong school is considered a
bit posh at her home town, while on the other side of the border she
has to face with her classmates who are more affluent than her and
their lifestyle she cannot afford nor imitate. Also, the script finds
just the right tone regarding Peipei's family situation, making her
father largely absent hard worker and her mother absent-minded casual
alcoholic and party girl.
The
casting choices Bai Xue makes are also on the money. That especially
goes for Huang Yao who plays Peipei, for whom the role is a
screen debut after some experience on the stage. The actress is
proficient in both Mandarin and Cantonese, which is not a common
trait, but it is necessary for the role, her naivety (or innocence,
take it as you like it) cannot be faked, and that also goes for her
uneasy chemistry with her co-stars, mainly Sun Yang as Hao and
Ka-Man Tong as Jo, while Elena Kong fits the role of
Mrs Hua perfectly, finding a perfect balance between menacing and
warm presence.
But
the people are not the only characters in this story. The cities are
also elevated to that level. With the help of his DOP Piao Sangri,
Xue employs different styles in portrait of both of them,
highlighting the verticality of Hong Kong and busy feeling of its
streets and alleys, while Shenzhen is caught in longer and wider
takes, insisting on the calmness of the landscape where the
protagonist feels at home. Combined with controlled pacing (kudos
also to the editor Matthieu Laclau whose work we got to see on
recent Jia Zhangke films from "A Touch of Sin"
onwards), "The Crossing" is a complex film that tackles a
number of topics with surgical precision, while keeping its heart at
the right place.
