Returning to the cinema for the first time after a six-month hiatus in a nervily dispiriting time that a debut feature from a young Chinese filmmaker might be cold comfort, but Gu Xiaogang’s DWELLING IN THE FUCHUN MOUNTAINS, the closing film of Cannes’ International Critics’ Week in 2019, is strangely rewarding, not least for its thematic integration of a modern China's built environment with Gu’s hometown, the exceedingly picturesque Fuyang district of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, most notably for the Fuchun River, the middle stretch of Qiantang River that runs for 459 kilometers.
The first chapter of a planned tetralogy, DWELLING opens with a rambunctious birthday banquet of an elderly woman (Du), simply referred as mum, with her clan of four sons and, their respective families, but jollification is ironically snuffed after she is smack smitten with a stroke while jocosely doling out a “red packet”, a Chinese tradition inside which banknotes are concealed, to her grandson Kangkang (Sun Zikang), who is a patient of Downs syndrome. After that, mum is taken living with her oldest son Youfu (Qian), his wife Fengjuan (Wang) and their daughter Guxi (Peng), but vicissitudes of quotidian life unfold like a Chinese stroll (the film’s title is also the name of the renowned wash drawing by Huang Gongwang, 1269-1354, the oldest of the "Four Masters of the Yuan dynasty”), languidly but ineluctable, marriage arrangement, filial obligation, fraternal liaisons, illegal gravy train, generational confrontation and the shifting ethos are all too familial in the contemporary Chinese society.
Casting amateur actors in an ensemble piece is a chancy maneuver, some are prone to overact (Wang’s loud volume is simply too much for a typically jaundiced role, a money-oriented middle-aged mother who cannot condone her daughter’s choice of a husband), while others are not up to the task when emotional effusion is requested (a close-up near the end leveling at the fourth son Youhong, stays far over its welcome as the actor Sun Zhangwei is too impassive or stilted to convey what the director intends, that is squirming); the simply most empathetic impression is attained from the third son Youjin (Sun Zhangjian), Kangkang’s single father, ostensibly a black sheep, but in the end of the day, he is the most fleshed-out one, albeit taking a low road to earn fast cash.
If the acting is a curate’s egg, what Gu robustly, even relentlessly indulges is the long takes which move horizontally whenever he finds fit, like the one-take swimming sequence that is shot from a concurrently coursing vessel, or the pillow shots of its tranquil natural landscape that differ from season to season, night from day, mountainous, riparian or waterborne, often juxtaposed with the intrusion of artificial manufactures, Gu might adequately equipped with the craftsmanship, but what finds wanting is a personal flair that puts the name Bi Gan on the international map of emergent filmmakers for his first two movies, that said, as a first feature, its inclusion in the Cannes is already a harbinger of an auspicious future, and if Gu can extrude more poeticism that attunes to Dou Wei’s Zen-inflected incidental music, his sophomoric undertaking will more likely be the true beacon of whether Gu is, expectantly, a new Chinese auteur to be reckoned with.
referential entries: Wang Jing’s FENG SHUI (2012, 7.7/10); Bi Gan’s KAILI BLUES (2015, 8.2/10).
