Hao ji le
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | 好 极 了 (Hao ji le) |
| Country of production | People's Republic of China |
| original language | Mandarin |
| Publishing year | 2017 |
| length | 75 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Liu Jian |
| script | Liu Jian |
| production | Yang Cheng Liu Jian |
| music | The Shanghai Restoration Project |
| cut | Militia Xiao Liu |
| occupation | |
| |
Hao ji le (original title:好极了, alternative festival title: Have a Nice Day and Have a nice day ) is a Chinese animated film of Liu Jian from the year 2017 . The black comedy takes place in an unnamed Chinese city, in which a stolen bag with money from a local mafioso wanders among people from all walks of life, revealing their respective longings and abysses. Director Liu Jian drew the film alone for over three years.
The film premiered on February 17, 2017 in the competition at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. The cinema release in Germany is on February 7, 2019.
action
A suburb of a major southern Chinese city: Construction site driver Xiao Zhang takes a bag with one million yuan (approx. 137,000 euros ) from Lao Zhao, the courier of the local mafia boss Uncle Liu . The money will go to his fiancée, whose face was disfigured during plastic surgery. Xiao Zhang plans to flee to South Korea with her . He leaves the getaway car and his cell phone behind and rents a room in a train station hotel. He informs his girlfriend via instant messaging about a nearby internet café, but cannot reach her. When Xiao Zhang pays for a noodle soup with one of the 100 yuan bills in a diner, the tech-savvy elder Yellow Eye and his girlfriend notice him. With the help of X-ray glasses, the inventor can see what is in the bag. Gelbauge and his girlfriend then kidnap Xiao Zhang to find out if there is anything else they can get from him. When they want to leave the city with the unconscious Xiao Zhang in the backseat, they are flashed. When Gelbauge tried to destroy the speed camera system, he was subjected to an electric shock and lost consciousness for a long time. Gelbauges girlfriend escapes on foot with the money.
Meanwhile, Mafioso Uncle Liu is informed of the stolen money by Lao Zhao. He is busy torturing a painter friend who has cheated on him with his wife. Uncle Liu then puts the hit man Beanpole on the case. The proud beanpole with martial arts experience, who also sells pork, can quickly trace Xiao Zhang back to the internet café through his cell phone connection data. There he also finds Xiao Zhang's lost motel room keycard. Using Xiao Zhang's messaging service, Beanstalk tries to lure the fiancée into the motel, where he is waiting for her. Instead, the fiancé has her mother send her cousin and her boyfriend to the hotel. The two also have connections to Uncle Liu and dream of taking the money from Xiao Zhang and leading a Maoist worker and peasant life in the mythical, untouched natural landscape of " Shangri-La ". In the motel room, however, the two are overwhelmed by the beanpole.
Xiao Zhang comes to and drives Gelbauge's abandoned car to the internet café. There he was knocked unconscious by several young men with a bottle when he asked for his internet connection back and became aware of the chat between Yellow Eyes and his fiancée. When he regains consciousness, he rushes to the motel, where he meets Beanstalk. Xiao Zhang manages to seriously injure Beanstalk with his knife. Yellow eyes also find their way to the hotel and use tricks to keep Uncle Liu's contract killer in check. When Uncle Liu is asked for help by Bohnenstange, he sets off with the tortured rival in the trunk and his assistant. Meanwhile, Gelbauge's friend, who was about to leave town, accidentally got in touch with Lao Zhao through her sister. The stolen courier offers to take her with him by car. When they quarrel over their wallet, Lao Zhao and Gelbauge's girlfriend are involved in a serious car accident. Uncle Liu, who happened to be passing by, and his helper became aware of the accident. However, Uncle Liu is hit by the arriving Yellow Eye and seriously injured. Gelbauge had secretly attached a transmitter to his girlfriend's necklace and was able to locate her. Uncle Liu's helper is also shot by Yellow-Eyes - Yellow-Eyes is run over by the angry and seriously injured Beanstalk. Xiao Zhang, unconscious in the back seat of Bohnenstange's car, wakes up when the rain sets in. The film ends when his gaze falls on the opened bag with the red yuan banknotes.
reception
The film came in second best of all competition films (3.3 out of four possible stars) in the international reviews of the British trade magazine Screen International, behind Aki Kaurismäki's The Other Side of Hope .
Fabian Tietke ( the daily newspaper ) reviewed Hao ji le as a “weird mafia comedy”, which “is without a doubt one of the stronger films in a decidedly mixed year of the competition”. As in his previous film Citong wo (Piercing I), Liu Jian cast "[...] a sober look at the concrete urbanity of China with a dark, eccentric humor." The animation is determined by "linear drawings that [...] ] follow a style that has meanwhile become almost globally established, in which the lines are set a little more uncleanly, which lends dynamism to even still images. According to Tietke, the “pull of the action” is sometimes inhibited by the sparse, non-lip-synchronous animation.
Christian Vooren ( Der Tagesspiegel ) compared the film with Pulp Fiction and saw an "entertaining system criticism made in China", "full of small, black-humored allusions". He noted “close-ups with great attention to detail” and “depressingly precise industrial panoramas”. “Only those elements that are important are moved in the picture - a kind of dramaturgical autofocus. The sky: always gray, the landscape: always barren. Finest sadness. ”, Says Vooren, who also noticed a reference to Liu Jian's previous film Piercing I in the form of a film poster in Hao ji le .
Hao ji le was originally intended to be shown at the Festival d'Animation Annecy in June 2017 . The festival organizers said they took the film out of the competition under pressure from the Chinese authorities so as not to “endanger the film team”. Allegedly there was no authorization from the People's Republic of China to show the film internationally. Film producer Yang Cheng defended the work, but stated that the film team voluntarily waived a presentation in Annecy. The Chinese film industry should be proud of a film that reports "about the longing and fate of people" and has nothing to do with politics, said Yang Cheng. He hoped to be able to show the film in Chinese cinemas in 2017. The film had previously been shown in competition at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema in April and at the Seattle International Film Festival in June , but received no awards.
Awards
Hao ji le competed for the Golden Bear , the main prize of the film festival, in the Berlinale competition , but remained unprofitable.
Web links
- Hao ji le in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Profile at berlinale.de
- official German website for the film
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Hao ji le - Have a nice day | rbb Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg ". Accessed February 18, 2017. http://www.rbb-online.de/kultur/berlinale/berlinale-im-rbb-programm-2017/berlinale-studio/berlinale-studio7/filmkritik-hao-ji-le-einen- schoenen-tag-noch.html # top . 1:18 min ff.
- ↑ Grater, Tom: Berlin: 'The Other Side Of Hope' tops Screen's final jury grid at screendaily.com, February 20, 2017 (accessed March 16, 2017).
- ↑ Tietke, Fabian: The bag with the money . In: the daily newspaper , February 18, 2017, p. 15.
- ^ Vooren, Christian: The freedom of the farmers' market . In: Der Tagesspiegel , February 18, 2017, No. 23032, p. 26.
- ↑ Profile at annecy.org (accessed on 21 June 2017).
- ↑ McDonell, Stephen: Have A Nice Day, Chinese gangster animation, blocked in France at bbc.com, June 14, 2017 (accessed June 21, 2017).
- ^ Profile at festivales.buenosaires.gob.ar (accessed June 21, 2017).
- ↑ Profile (accessed on 21 June 2017) at siff.net.