|
Unknown Pleasures
Directed by Jia Zhang Ke
Starring: Zhao Tao, Zhao Wei Wei, Wu Qiong, Zhou Qing Feng
Script: Jia Zhang Ke
Original Title: Ren xiao yao
Running Time: 1:53
Country: China
Year: 2002
Official Site: Unknown Pleasures
|
|
Jia Zhianghe, whose films Xiao Wu (1997) and Platform (2000) garnered considerable attention, returns with a contemplative work about the idleness of Chinese youth in a country in transition.
Xiao Ji and Bin Bin hang out all day. Xiao Ji falls in love with a ravishing singer, a local star under the tight grip of a despotic manager with whom she has had an affair. The young man uses bravado and provocation to seduce her. They spend only one night together. As for Bin Bin, he's at the end of a relationship with a teenager. He decides to join the army, more out of boredom than by conviction, and discovers that he has hepatitis. These various disappointments will push the two friends to commit an absurd holdup where Bin Bin is arrested.
Zhianghe's film requires a lot from the audience, as its pace is very slow and its narrative is built on the premise that some events must happen, sometimes right on the edge of the screen. Some long shots record the smallest thrills of these drifting beings. The filmmaker has understood that the purest (or the most primitive) expression in cinema is the concept of an accident.
Zhianghe uses his camera like a poetic instrument to record reality. Two splendid sequences illustrate this approach, featuring Xiao Ji fighting with his motorcycle—a real dramatic tool here. As long as the motorcycle works, the character can symbolically advance. In the middle of the film, the engine stalls. The character tries, to the point of exhaustion, to reach the top of a hillock, unceasingly starting over the recalcitrant motorcycle. With difficulty he finally succeeds, just like he struggles to keep going after breaking up with his girlfriend. Towards the end of the film, as the character is speeding away from the holdup scene, the motorcycle stops. In the background we see thunder and then it starts raining. Xiao Ji must give up his fetish, right in the middle of the road, just like it'll be necessary for him to get rid of his teenage traappings to become an adult. A car stops. The character disappears from the screen. These luminous scenes act as rewards for the spectator who accepts entering the story and being carried away.
Zhianghe learned the lessons of cinema given by his peers, with a lot of application (perhaps a little too much). He doesn't hesitate to quote them and one can notice the humor and multiple winks present here. As a street vendor hastily tries to liquidate a stock of DVDs, a potential buyer asks him if he has... Zhianghe's earlier films! In the same scene, the filmmaker quotes a picture from fellow director Yu Lik-Wai, Love Will Tear Us Apart, whose title is a reference to a hit from Joy Division. Similarly, Unknown Pleasures refers to another title from the mythical Manchester band's discography. These unknown pleasures are perhaps those of first loves, including cinema...
Sandrine Marques
|
Copyright ©1998-2017 LA PLUME NOIRE All rights reserved.
|
|
Unknown Pleasures review
