THE LOOMING STORM (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) Music composed by 丁可 Dingke Director Dong Yue
THE LOOMING STORM (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Music composed by 丁可 Dingke
Director
Dong Yue
Digital &
Physical Distribution
Label Plaza Mayor Company
Ltd
The Orchard
A security guard plays de tective with
dire results in Dong Yue’s atmospheric psychological film noir.
The Looming
Storm, the first feature by cinematographer-turned-filmmaker Dong Yue, conveys
above all a sense of dashed hopes. Men in dark-gray mackintoshes under an
endless downpour typify this Chinese film noir, whose glum atmosphere echoes a
disintegrating social situation. The poorest sectors of society falter as the
country modernizes and shrugs off its old and unproductive elements. China’s competition
entry in this year’s Tokyo Film Festival is a think piece, thinly disguised as
a murder mystery. Though far too long at nearly two hours, its stylish look
lends it a certain fascination while the story heralds a new filmmaker ready to
tackle sensitive issues.
Most of the
action is set in 1997, a crucial year for China that saw the death of leader
Deng Xiaoping and the Handover of Hong Kong, which returned it to Chinese
sovereignty. It was also the year that Deng’s successor Jiang Zemin began divesting
the country of its debt-ridden state-owned enterprises. In one of these doomed
dinosaurs, a sprawling old factory in the middle of nowhere, Yu Guowei (Duan
Yihong) runs a modest security department with his doltish assistant Xiao Liu
(Zheng Wei). His success at catching a handful of thieving employees earns him
the Model Worker of the Year award and a chance to prattle optimism to a
captive audience of factory hands.
But the film
actually begins in 2008, a year of natural disasters in China, when Guowei is
released from prison. So this is not a whodunnit or even a howdunnit, but a
story that slowly reveals why its self-important hero spent 10 years behind
bars. The very first scene leaves no doubt that the director intends for
everything to be read on a broader scale: Asked to spell his name for prison
records, Guowei replies it is “yu” for unnecessary remnants, “guo” for nation
and “wei” for “glorious.” He is indeed one of the expendable leftovers of a
glorious nation, a cast-off like millions of others. Depicting this is an
ambitious agenda for a first feature and, like his hero, Duan’s ambitions tend
to exceed what he can actually achieve.
We meet Guowei,
as genre conventions demand, at the scene of a woman’s gruesome murder. It is
the fourth killing with the same MO and old Chief Zhang (a well-traveled and
exhausted Du Yuan) surmises it's the same murderer. Guowei has been summoned to
see if anyone missed work at the factory. This opens a hornet’s nest of
aspirations on Guowei’s part to leave his job in factory security for a police
appointment. But he finds few clues when he drags his reluctant sidekick Xiao
Liu to the crime scene, nor does a hooker he talks to at the Workers Stadium
help him ID a likely suspect. Eventually, Guowei believes he is on the trail of
the murderer and chases a hooded figure up and down ladders at the factory and
then through a railroad yard. He is so caught up in playing detective that he
barely notices how Xiao Liu has taken a nasty fall.
Guowei meets a
pretty prostitute, Yanzi (Jiang Yiyun), who develops some affection for him
after he installs her in a beauty parlor in the Hong Kong section of town (she
asks him poignantly whether he thinks it will one day be possible to travel
freely to HK). However, she doesn’t turn this murder-obsessed asexual into a
romantic. On the contrary, Guowei embarks on a program of spying on her which
ends badly. In the end, he finds reality falling apart around him and the
viewer realizes Guowei (and the director) are very unreliable narrators, a fact
that puts most of the film into question. It’s an interesting twist, but
perhaps too advanced for a first-time filmmaker. The final scenes have a
hurried, unsettled quality that leaves the audience wondering what really
happened.
With its overcast
skies and industrial pipes sticking surreally out of the rural landscape, Cai
Tao’s cinematography conveys a sweeping sense of space that is visually quite
entrancing, even if it emphasizes brackish, rain-soaked grays that seriously
dampen the quality of life. Even the colors are a metaphor, of course, that
grow to feel over-used.
Production company: Century
Pictures
Cast: Duan Yihong, Jiang Yiyan, Du Yuan, Zheng Wei
Director: Dong Yue
Producer: Xiao Qiancao
Executive producer: Luo Yan
Director of photography: Cai Tao
Production and costume designer: Liu Qiang
Editor: Wen Jing
Casting director: Wang Chengxu
World sales: Century Pictures
Venue: Tokyo Film Festival (competition)
Cast: Duan Yihong, Jiang Yiyan, Du Yuan, Zheng Wei
Director: Dong Yue
Producer: Xiao Qiancao
Executive producer: Luo Yan
Director of photography: Cai Tao
Production and costume designer: Liu Qiang
Editor: Wen Jing
Casting director: Wang Chengxu
World sales: Century Pictures
Venue: Tokyo Film Festival (competition)
Dingke was a
singer-songwriter born in 1986 in Liuzhou, China. He has a great passion for
film music, theatre, and contemporary dance. He was nominated for the film
festival "Golden Horse" in Taiwan for the award of the best Film
song, and at the film Festival "Hongkong Film Awards" for the award
for Best Film Music ", thanks to the film" Port of Call ".
In 2016, he
composed for the film "Pleasure Love" directed by Huang Yao. This
film was nominated at the Sundance Film Festival.
His music is a
mixture of dream-pop, contemporary classical and electronics, through an
original approach to the use of instruments like the piano as well as the
string quartet and its voice of a magnificent tonality. His music entrains us
in a fantasy universe, melancholy, but sometimes and full of emotions.
He lives and
works in France in Paris now.
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