Vivian Qu is the Chinese film-maker who has directed three features and also produced the noir drama Black Coal, Thin Ice which in 2014 won Berlin’s Golden Bear. Now she brings this crime melodrama to Berlin, an engaging if tonally uncertain high-wire adventure that satirises China’s hopeless addiction to gangster capitalism. It is also acidly unsentimental about the bread-and-circuses escapism of the country’s booming film and TV industry with all its period-costume wuxia nostalgia. It’s an appealing film, though it contains some strangely broad comedy and is also, in a couple of violent moments, a bit naive about exactly how easy it is for a young woman physically to fight off a big strong guy.
Above all, Qu gives us a rather amazing set-piece scene on the set of a wire-fu action movie, a scene that feels real in a way that the rest of the film really doesn’t, for all that it is watchable. Fang Di (Wen Qi) is a tough woman employed as a stunt double on a movie set, playing the black clad, sword-wielding ninja bouncing over terracotta rooftops and whizzing through the air in long shot. For the closeup, the preening star in the same outfit steps in while Fang Di staggers over to get a coffee at the craft table. The work is exhausting and dangerous and Fang Di is doing it to pay off her family debts to mob matriarch Madame Wang.
