Feng Shui: Tokyo Film Festival Review

The Bottom Line

A commanding performance from Yang Bingyan anchors director Wang Jings grim assessment of modern city life in mainland China.

Wang Jing

Yan Bingyan, Jiao Gang, Chen Gang

The yoke of poverty proves an enduring burden in Feng Shui, Chinese director Wang Jings compassionate study of a working-class womans struggle to improve her status during the sharp economic rise of the 1990s. Stepping outside his social-issues wheelhouse with this piercing family drama, the director reveals a keen eye for high-stakes interpersonal conflict and the inner torment roiling within ordinary people.

Older audiences will appreciate the measured, conventional storytelling, elevated by a stunning central performance from veteran Beijing-born actress Yang Bingyan, who is rarely off-screen and convincingly roams the emotional gamut. Her devastating portrayal of a woman undone by a preoccupation with success makes this Mandarin-language production a solid booking for further Asia-centric festivals following its premiere in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

With 2009s Invisible Killer, a murder mystery highlighting the destructive power of the internet, and 2010s Vegetate, which took a critical look at Chinas pharmaceutical industry, Wang Jing has built a reputation for taking on pressing social issues. Condemnation of the wrenching social transformations which accompanied the countrys rapid economic growth is common among Chinese auteurs, but here it is used to background a drama that is resolutely individual in its focus.

Li Baoli (Yang) works as a shopkeepers helper in the heavily populated central Chinese city of Wuhan. Shes a tortured soul, racked by anguish and indeterminate rage, which manifests itself in torrents of abuse and scorn heaped upon her husband and her studious young son. In short, shes a shrew.

She continues to berate her milquetoast husband Ma Xuewu (Jiao Gang) even as his steady job as a factory team leader provides them with the means to move into a well-appointed highrise apartment where, she is momentarily pleased to discover, they have the luxury of their own bathroom.

Wu Nans screenplay, based on a novel by Fang Fang, keeps Baolis inner dialogue from us so we are sometimes at as much of a loss to fathom her emotional thrashing about as her family and friends are. Making this protagonist sympathetic is a Herculean task, but Yang (Memory of Love, Close to Me) rises to the challenge, giving us glimpses of the panic behind her agitation and the steely determination she musters just to carry on.

See the original post here:

Feng Shui: Tokyo Film Festival Review