芙蓉镇

评分：

6.0 还行

原名：芙蓉镇又名：Hibiscus Town

分类：剧情 / 爱情 / 地区：中国大陆年份：1987

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更新时间:2023-05-25

芙蓉镇影评：[Film Review] Hibiscus Town (1987)

Among the Third Generation directors of China, Xie Jin (1923-2008) is the one whose works not only attain tremendous popularity domestically, but also reap recognition on the international soil. HIBISCUS TOWN, his 13th feature, nabbing the Crystal Globe in Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, is a remarkable melodrama wedding the personal with the political. Adapted from Gu Hua’s eponymous novel, it is a sweeping tale of woe about the folks in the titular town during the tumult of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (1966-1976).

The riparian Hibiscus town resides in the junction of Hunan, Guangxi and Guangdong provinces, residents Yuyin (Liu Xiaoqing) and her husband Guigui (Liu Linian) are street vendors, working their fingers to the bones, their beancurd is very successful, they manage to build a new house, but instead of prospering, they are bedeviled by the green eyed monster, Yuyin is nicknamed “Beancurd Beauty” because of her prettiness, which naturally attracts men’s attention and antagonizes fellow womenfolks, even Wuzhuala (Xu Ning, a striking embodiment of rustic mentality and welly), the modest wife of Yuyin’s sworn brother Mangeng (Zhang Guangbei, playing the guilty party with a touch of furtiveness), is peeved to see her husband get pally with her.

But the chief black hat materializes in the person of Li Guoxiang (Xu Songzi), who levies Yuyin’s popularity and rises through the ranks because her uncle is a cadre member. During the Four Cleanups movement (1963-1965), Yuyin is betrayed by Mangeng, persecuted by Guoxiang, and Guigui is executed for a failed assassination attempt, and during the following Cultural Revolution, Yuyin is classified as a rich peasant (one of the Five Black Categories, deemed as the enemies of the revolution), and becomes a street sweeper, together with Qin Shutian (Jiang Wen), aka. Crazy Qin, an intellectual classified as a Right-winger.

Defeated by her harrowing fate, Yuyin is reduced to a walking dead, the only chink of light flickering in her life is Qin’s company. Crazy Qin is anything but crazy, adopting a philosophical and flexible attitude, he is slick as an eel. Subjecting himself to the mistreatment without a grunt, seeming obsequious in front of his abusers, he never lets emotion get the better of him, it is a brilliant tact of self-preservation. A guardian angel for Yuyin, Qin slowly resurrects Yuyin, both physically and mentally, their romance burgeons, sublimely symbolized by the imagery of two brooms in apposition. Yet, there is one last affliction they must endure before they attain a hard-earned happy ending.

HIBISCUS TOWN is a cracking critique on PRC’s past wrongs, something which is at a premium today thanks to the government’s increasingly restricting censorship. Xie Jin lucks out with a fine-grained script, utilizing a handful of characters to vividly portray a cross section of ordinary folks, each is created with distinctive personality and intrinsic complexity.

Taking example of the most despicable characters, Wang Qiushe (Zhu), a ne’er-do-well opportunist who jumps on the bandwagon of “movement” and bootlicks Guoxiang without any shame, represents the petty evilness that has no loyalty, yet, his abject confession to Guoxiang also arouses a soupçon of sympathy, Qiushe is not cut it for big things, but he will never miss an opportunity to seek profit for himself.

Then there is Guoxiang, on the strength of Xu Songzi’s singularly stupendous performance, she never slumps into a clichéd antagonist, it is true that Guoxiang benefits from nepotism, her acrimony is germinated from jealousy, but she is also an ideologue blinded by the cause, of which even when herself is subjugated as a victim, she still doesn’t repent, moreover, when she gets a second chance, she goes more radical and unregenerate. Xu pulls off a high-wire act by piling up layers and layers of inner feelings onto her without grandstanding, so we can fairly understand what makes Guoxiang tick, we despise her action, but not blindly, we also see her as a human being riddled with vice.

Intriguingly, HIBISCUS TOWN doesn’t settle for an easy downfall for Guoxiang, when the dust finally settles, she is apparently unaffected by the prior turmoil, she remains a cadre member and only a tenuous awkwardness colors her complexion during a chance meeting with Qin. Leaving the persecutor unscathed, Xie Jin’s film quietly but resoundingly hits out at the evil-doers, who have no conscience to spare, and to whom one must remain heedful all the time.

The commendable cast also includes Zheng Zaishi’s granary director Gu Yanshan, a war hero wound in the front line, yet he must inure humiliation, calumny and disillusion in the peace time, Zheng emotively personifies a benevolent figure with all his might, his scenes of crapulous reminiscence and ebullition is among the most puissant. As for the two leads, Liu Xiaoqing doesn’t shy away from the cynosure of Xie Jin’s attentive camera, she comports herself with adequate dignity and dithery. Her Yuyin is spunky in the first half, who wears the pants in the family, then stricken down and devolves into a damsel in distress in the second half, passively accepts her kismet until gets revitalized by a new man in her life.

Jiang Wen (a future mainstay of Chinese cinema, both in front of and behind the camera), at the age of 24, certainly doesn’t look his age. Possessing enough aplomb and savvy, his Crazy Qin is the wisest one, the paragon of an “essentially good human being” and Jiang’s macho flair and unorthodox sensibility is and has remained as a special scenery of Chinese cinema.

To all intents and purposes, HIBISCUS TOWN is a heady melodrama steeped in Xie Jin and his co.’s virtuosity, it uncharacteristic camera movement and angles often in concert with strikingly expressive blocking and compositions, Ge Yan’s incredibly lyrical score unerringly honing the film’s emotional trajectory step by step, it is a defiant ode to love and compassion against a backdrop of tenebrosity.

referential entries: Jiang Wen’s HIDDEN MEN (2018, 6.9/10); Tian Zhuangzhuang’s THE HORSE THIEF (1986, 7.6/10).