Feng Shui

This is probably one of the best Chinese-language films ever. It successfully develops a memorable female character in modern China. The character, perfectly played by Yan Bingyan, is gritty, unflinching, unyielding, optimistic and stubborn, even under extremely difficult conditions like a disloyal husband or an ungrateful child. The script is realistic, the direction is suspenseful, and the performances are impeccable. We see such characters in everyday life, but no other films could be so sharp and resonant.

Chinese filmmaker Wang Jing has cut his teeth in delineating contemporary lives of mostly ordinary folks ever since his debut LIFE WITH NOODLES (1997), his eighth feature FENG SHUI has been possibly his most well-known and well-received work to date, taking place in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province in the Central China, the story begins in the 90s, and pivot around an ordinary nuclear family, Li Baoli (Yan Bingyan), a hosiery vendor in Henzheng Street, a popular local retail center, is married to Ma Xuewu (Jiao Gang), an office directer in a state-owned factory, and they have a school-age son Xiaobao (Wang Tiange).

It is a celebratory day as it seems, the family is moving to a new apartment allotted to them by Ma's factory, it is on the 13th floor of a council estate, but this doesn't augur well, Baoli's propensity of penny-pinching and Bolshy aggressiveness is in blatant discordance with Xuewu's henpecked reaction, and on that very night, after some deliberation, he propounds divorce for the first time and it throws Baoli for a loop.

Gradually, the couple's intrinsic personality discrepancy floats above the surface while the rift widens, Baoli, albeit only received low education and from a hard-up family, has the vanity of being an indigenous Wuhan citizen and a pretty face which attracts multiple suitors, so in her mind, she condescends herself to marry Xuewu, an intellectual who doesn't hail from a big city. It is this pretentious bias which is pointedly prevalent in reality, that divides their union from the very start, certainly, Baoli is the one who should answer for this, but the wages of it is too high for her to imagine.

Desperate to find some reprieve from a harpy-like Baoli, Xuewu has a go at an extramarital liaison with a married colleague Zhou Fen (Wang Moxi), which will result in a chain reaction completely sever his family, and the most astonishingly deleterious knock-on effect incurs on Xiaobao, played by Li Xian ten years after, when the film's second half pans out, Baoli, has been toiling as a menial shoulder-pole worker for a decade to raise Xiaobao, who is the top student in his advanced class as the annual university entrance exam is on the horizon. An oceanic divide has been mounted between Baoli and her son, the latter is closer to his paternal grandma (He Minglan) and has a chip on his shoulder with the one whom he blames for his fatherless quagmire.

Why Xiaobao is such an ingrate? Who in the climax wants to sever all ties with Baoli after a triumphant exam, in his head, nothing she has done can ever atone her sin, nor alleviate the after- effect of a traumatized childhood, and in truth, we can viscerally understand that, Baoli is not a role-model mother, but the rub here is Xiaobo selfishly, maybe also involuntarily garbles Baoli's motive, she has made a blunder out of fury, which is his father's own fault to begin with, she fails to foresee its disastrous consequences, and the vagaries of life has its own plan, but at any rate, to fan such a deep-dish rancor feels like beyond the pale.

FENG SHUI is a poignant ode to an imperfect, but ultimately courageous woman, and Yan Bingyan's extraordinary leading performance is without any doubt, the film's No. 1 asset, an achievement brought into fruition by her whole-hearted immersion into the role and a transcendent proficiency that she shines in every scene, whether Baoli appears disagreeable or ballsy, obfuscated or sagacious, heartbroken or elated, her on-the-nose acting chops shoot squarely into a viewer's sensorium with entrancing reverberations, a performance of a lifetime is not exaggerated. Bracingly, the subordinate players are also quite game, Jiao Gang, in particular, tackles a craven character with nicety and unpretentiousness, yet, his Xuewu lingers like a wraith in the second half, which makes his blank-page revenge such an invidiously cruel stratagem in hindsight.

The titular geomancy refers to the inauspicious locus where the family's apartment building is erected, and its original Chinese title, can be verbatim interpreted as "a thousand arrows shooting through a heart", but Baoli doesn't cower to the jinx, repeatedly, she holds her kismet in her own hands, it is this spirit that every audience can empathize with, and in its finale, after Baoli finally comes to terms with her son's decision and realizes what damage she has done to her own blood, Wang Jing suffixes a wondrous final touch from a bird's-eye view shot: Baoli leaves with the tearaway Jianjian (Chen Gang), whose second-hand van doesn't start up, so she has to get off and give it a push, expletives included. This is life as it is, and will always be, no happy ending is vouchsafed, but Baoli epitomizes gazillions of strong women in our society, who do not cringe before the unfavorable status quo or the unforeseeable futurity, come hell or high water, FENG SHUI is a perceptive melodrama hits the bull's eye of the inarticulate ambivalence of human feelings against checkered consequences.

The subject is fate… or karma… or personal feng shui, if you will. An uneducated, uncultured woman pushes her husband and child. She loves them, but she is abrasive, and frankly, very difficult to live with. She simply knows no other way. Sadly, her behavior helps drive her husband to make some very destructive choices, and since he is far closer to the boy than she, the boy grows to despise her. The situation grows worse as circumstances lead to the permanent absence of the father, an absence that leads her to make some extremely painful sacrifices in order to better assure a good life for her boy. Still, she is never able to break the ice and emotionally connect with the child. Instead, she allows the child to be raised by her husband's mother while she works overtime to support the three of them as a human ox, literally carrying the burden of others for a living. And does the grandparent appreciate this? No, she too blames the woman for her son's absence, and through her closeness with the grandson, further plants the seeds of hatred within him.

Then again, maybe the mother's sacrifices aren't so selfless. Maybe she is simply looking after herself, supporting the pair so that her son, one day, will be in a better position to support her. In the end, the film provides no easy answers. Everyone's pain is both understandable and inexcusable. And all that an unskilled, manual laborer can do is simply keep pushing along.