Zhang Yimou is clearly happier in the country of Red Sorghum or To Live than in the big city.
Still, this black comedy set in Beijing (I think), has a neat story of humour, deception and pathos. Zhao, a stout layabout (Zhao Benshan, one of China's top comics), desperate for a wife to mother him, facilitates an obese gold-digger wanting a spare room for her couch-potato son by taking her blind step-daughter (Dong Jie) off her hands and offering her employment in his massage parlour.
The place is only a disused factory outhouse, whose sackcloth walls the sightless lass mistakes for silk and whose clients are Zhao's workless mates, while tape-recorded street noises give her the impression she's in the smart quarter of the city. There's a relentless heartlessness to the story that eventually overwhelms its last-minute attempts to introduce warm human stresses.
Zhao is so stingy that when the girl wants a Haagen-Dazs ice cream, he fobs her off with a Popsicle; and the actress's own frailty, sweetness and innocence don't cause the tale to lose any of its own iciness.
But it's interesting to see Zhang Yimou bringing his art closer to the demands of a Hollywood sitcom - 20th Century-Fox's Searchlight subsidiary (which nabbed The Full Monty) is distributing the film, so perhaps the beneficiary will be Rupert Murdoch and his attempts to gain a foothold, by finance or patronage, in the Chinese internal market.
What I anticipate shortly is a Hollywood remake of the story: perhaps that's why it was bought in the first place.
Billy Wilder wouldn't have turned up his nose at its curious mixture of callous duplicity and melting sentiment. We shall see.
Happy Times
Cert: certPG
