Another View 2016 / Underground Fragrance / France, China 2015
Yong Le has arrived in Beijing from the south, as has Xiao Yun, whom he encounters in the Underground City, a former air-raid shelter that floods every time it rains and is home to impoverished immigrants. The two newcomers, and old Lao Jin as well, dream of a better life, but the megalopolis – China’s symbol of economic development – takes no pity on them.
Yong Le has left the provinces of southern China to find work in Beijing. He salvages old furniture, which he repairs and then sells, sleeping in a tiny room in the Underground City, a former bomb shelter which gets flooded every time it rains. When he suffers an injury on a building site and nearly loses his vision, Yong has to use a rope to find his way back along the long, dimly lit corridors to his primitive lodgings. He receives help from another basement resident, Xiao Yun, and their ensuing friendship encourages her to find another way to make a living than dancing in a nightclub. Above them on the ground floor lives Lao Jin, an ailing old man who has been struggling with the authorities to get a decent compensation deal for a small house due for demolition. All three characters share their dream of a better life, but the megalopolis sustaining Chinese neocapitalism is unstoppable. The consistent lensing of his characters from above, often viewed as part of a crowd, attests to the pessimism of the director, whose first offering impressed audiences last year at Venice.
Eva Zaoralová (2012)
76 min / Color, DCP
Director Pengfei
/ Screenplay Pengfei, Isabelle Mayor
/ Dir. of Photography Shu Chou
/ Music Jean-Christophe Onno
/ Editor Isabelle Mayor
/ Art Director Wang Chaohui
/ Producer Vincent Wang
/ Production House on Fire
/ Coproduction Mishka Productions
/ Cast Ying Ze, Luo Wenjie, Zhao Fuyu, Li Xiaohui
/ Sales Urban Distribution International
Pengfei (b. 1982, Beijing), given name Peng Fei Song, studied film direction at L’Institute International de l’Image et du Son in Paris and, after seven years in the city, he returned to China. He worked with Tsai Ming Liang on the latter’s Face (Visage, 2009), Stray Dogs (2013), and his segment “Walker” from Beautiful 2012 (2012). Pengfei himself shot three short films, Between My Dream and Reality (Entre ma rêve et la réalité, 2005), And If Everything Could Begin Again (Et si tout pouvait recommencer, 2006), and Luxury: Human Portraits (Le luxe: Portraits d’humains, 2007), before he received support from several European institutions and was able to shoot the feature film Underground Fragrance, successfully screened in Venice Days in 2015.
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