The Other Half (Variety Review)

[dleedlee]

The Other Half
Ling Yi Ban (China)
A 90 Minute Film Studio production. Produced by Peng Shan. Directed, edited by Ying Liang. Screenplay, Ying, Peng Shan.

With: Zeng Xiaofei, Deng Gang, Zhao Ke, Liu Lian, Chen Xigui, Liu Hiubin.
(Mandarin dialogue)

Ying Liang's second film, shot on low-end equipment with nonprofessional actors, fully lives up to the promise of his brilliant, similarly impoverished debut "Taking Father Home." Ying's unerring eye for deep-space composition again transforms shoddy video into a riveting cinematic canvas. By having "real-life" women tell their problems directly to the camera, behind which sits a "fictional" femme with problems of her own, Ying and g.f./producer/co-writer Peng Shan have forged a dynamic dual perspective on China's female population. "The Other Half," following in the footsteps of "Home," is already garnering fest kudos.

Pic opens on the first of many interviews -- shot straight-on, in medium closeup with no reverse angles -- as Xiaofen (Zeng Xiaofei) applies for a job with a law firm, which she gets. The film then alternates between interviews (female clients speaking with their unseen lawyers), which Xiaofen is transcribing offscreen, and Xiaofen's own story, which often echoes those of the clients. At one point, Xiaofen takes the client's place centerframe, asking the lawyer's advice for a transparently nonexistent "friend."

The women's testimonies paint an overall picture of systemic gender bias, underscored by the unspoken complicity of the all-male lawyers. But instead of constituting simple portraits of victimization, the women's plaints are awash in humor, absurdity and wondrously unexpected twists. One woman seeks compensation from her company for the cirrhosis of the liver she contracted by getting drunk with clients in the line of duty. Another rattles off a litany of complaints, starting with her husband and ending with her dog -- not because she expects action, but because the consultation is free and venting makes her feel better.

Xiaofen's story comes off as no less emotionally resonant for being frankly banal (her live-in boyfriend Deng spends all his time drinking and gambling) or for being filmed almost exclusively in long shot. A strange kind of intimacy is created as the viewer follows Xiaofen's small figure, often identifiable only by her red umbrella, as she crosses an overpass or toils up a hill.

A reunion with her long-lost father, a fight with her boyfriend and a marriage prospect promoted by her mother, a quietly despairing drinking binge in a bar -- all transpire in a small portion of a crowded, noisy, unmoving frame, the audience's concentration on Xiaofen's drama intensified by its unprivileged place inside a wider social context.

The one time Xiaofen and Deng share a tender moment, it is almost immediately interrupted by an offscreen shout from Deng's drinking buddies outside. For the "outside" is all-pervasive: Pollution and environmental disasters hang like a cloud over the chemical factory-studded city of Zigong, as omnipresent in Xiaofen's chronic cough as in the constant government denials of the problem.

Endlessly haunting, the complex interplays between the individual and the collective, sound and image, foreground and background, all infuse Ying's films with serene, even joyous consciousness that is the opposite of despair. Despite the crumminess of the video resolution, the grayness of the cityscape and the rampant alcoholism, unemployment and venality of many of its inhabitants, "The Other Half" is one hell of a beautiful film.

Camera (color, video), Li Rongsheng, Ying; music, Ko Kyota, Zhang Xiao; art directors, Ying, Peng; sound, Ying, Peng. Reviewed at New Directors/New Films, New York, March 13, 2007. (Also in Rotterdam Film Festival.) Running time: 110 MIN.

http://www.varietyasiaonline.com/content/view/1148/