Directors’ fortnight
There are no longer in the ranks of the Cannes selection the films which, centered on the cinema, take place in its small environment (Bergman Island, by Mia Hansen-Love) or put a shoot in abyss (The Souvenir Part II, by Joanna Hogg). In this little game, the second feature film by young filmmaker Wei Shujun, one of the few to represent China on the Croisette this year, is undoubtedly the most subtle. Ripples of Life, one of the beautiful surprises of the Directors’ Fortnight, chooses to take place not during a shoot, but just before, in this moment of installation that we call the “locations”, where imitation has no still completely taken precedence over life, nor the scenario over reality.
It is the circumstances more than the people that do the work
A team therefore arrives in the small town-district of Yong’an, in south-eastern China, a historic site which is seeking to develop by opening up to tourism. The story, broken down into three stories, focuses on several characters variously affected by the film in preparation. The first, Gu, is the owner of the inn where the collective is located. Sometimes, between her daily tasks and the young infant she is raising, she sometimes picks up snippets of conversation: one seeks a female role for a local non-professional capable of speaking the local dialect; a profile that seems to match her perfectly without daring to take the plunge. Finally, the role falls to Chen, a famous actress from the area. We follow his reunion with the places and knowledge of yesteryear, including a former pretender now prisoner of a mediocre marriage. The last part tightens on the stormy duo formed by the director and the screenwriter: the day before the shooting, they bicker until the end of the night on the more or less dark turn to give to the film, given the pressures of an investor.
Singular humor
Ripples of Life First of all, it seems to blend into the tried and tested lexicon of a certain trendy Chinese auteur cinema, Jia Zhang-ke, where lives are measured against changes in the territory and where plans flow in the electric reflections of night lighting. However, the film seduces more broadly, first of all by its entrenchment of views on provincial life, but also because it manages, over time, to find its own tone. Melancholy, of course, because a city, even small like Yong’an, “ changes faster, alas !, than the heart of a mortal “ (Baudelaire). Petri especially of a singular humor, especially with regard to artistic creation. Shujun amuses himself by demystifying it with all demiurgic prestige, by showing it on the contrary as a series of chances, delusions, coincidences, indecisions – it is the circumstances more than the people who make the work.
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