Two star-crossed lovers share a fatal attraction in Huo Xin’s directing debut Bound in Heaven, a high-energy crimes-of-passion thriller set in 21st century China. Based on Li Xiuwen’s 2003 novel, the surface effect here is a fireworks display of raw emotion, though the twisty plot also has an appealing edge of old-school film noir fatalism, touching on gritty real-world themes including domestic abuse and terminal illness. Fresh from its Toronto world premiere, Huo’s roaringly romantic melodrama screens in competition in San Sebastian over the coming week. Female lead Ni Ni’s rising profile as both an actor (The Flowers of War, Lost in the Stars) and “brand ambassador” for luxury lifestyle companies like Gucci and L’Oréal should boost the film’s domestic prospects. Overseas, universal love-in-peril themes and eye-catching visuals could help with art-house crossover appeal, and maybe even English-language remake potential.
Huo, whose long list of screenwriting credits includes Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle (2004), makes an assured switch to writer-director mode here, elevating a story rooted in torrid B-movie excess with visual poetry and a fast-paced, zig-zagging plot. The time-jumping narrative spans several years and multiple cities, but it opens with a punch as Xia Yo (Ni Ni) tells police interrogators the blunt facts about her lover Xu Zitai (Zhou You) murdering her fiancé Song (Liao Fan). This feels like the set-up for a crime thriller, but when Huo rewinds to flesh out the back story, her film becomes a more complex saga of sexual obsession, looming mortality and love as an escape route from dead-end lives.
In a flashback to 2010, we learn that Song is a sadistic, controlling bully who regularly beats Xia. Whenever she tries to leave, he always tracks her down and the cycle of abuse begins again. After Song cruelly gives away Xia’s cherished tickets to a Shanghai concert by Hong Kong-based pop diva Faye Wong, she turns in desperation to Xu, a shabby black-market ticket broker who offers her a clandestine way to sneak inside the venue. Although Xu seems obstinately sullen and frosty towards Xia, she is still drawn to him, rewarding his small act of kindness with rough, steamy sex.
Months later, the pair meet again by chance in Wuhan, where their one night stand evolves into a casual affair. Xu advises Xia to kill Song with a knife, even demonstrating how to do it, which only angers her. But still their relationship deepens, and Xia agrees to a fraught meeting with Xu’s peasant parents in their humble home, role-playing as his future wife. This rural interlude includes some sublimely romantic moments, notably a set-piece lake-swimming sequence, but also tragedy, as Xu reveals he is dying of stomach cancer and cannot afford even basic medical treatment.
While Bound in Heaven is a unashamedly escapist blend of romance and thriller, it still contains a few caustic asides about class inequality, domestic abuse and patriarchal power in contemporary China. Huo could have made this socio-political critique more overt, but that would have been a very different film, and perhaps more problematic in terms of securing a homeland release. The final act is pure pyrotechnic passion featuring murder, morphine and lovers on the run from the police. Huo present this operatic crescendo as a defiantly romantic act of rebellion agaimst cruel fate. As Xu finally drops his mask of protective nonchalance towards Xia, he teaches her how to live, and she teaches him how to die.
In narrative terms, Bound in Heaven is hardly breaking new ground. The characters are two-dimensional at best, with Song a particularly flat caricature of remorseless evil. Even so, Huo sweetens these clunky, heavy-handed elements with stylistic swagger, gutsy performances, vivid production design and gorgeous visuals. Cinematographer Piao Songri gives the film a lusciously bright look that amplifies the serotonin-drunk, adrenaline-fuelled delirium of its protagonists. Swooping, expansive mobile shots bring the Chinese landscape vividly alive, especially during that sun-drenched lake scene, which combines lyrical overhead views with dynamic underwater footage. A later sequence set in a cable car during New Year, the screen ablaze with immersive panoramas of exploding fireworks, is such a majestic spectacle it transcends any earthbound notions of sentimental kitsch.
Director, screenwriter: Huo Xin, from the novel by Li Xiuwen
Cast: Ni Ni, Zhou You, Liao Fan
Cinematography: Piao Songri
Editor: Matthieu Laclau, Zhang Zhao, Yann-shan Tsai
Music: ZHI16, Radiax
Producers: An Hanjin, Justine O
Production companies: Such a Good Film (China), Alibaba Pictures (China), Ling Light (China)
World sales: Rediance, China
Venue: San Sebastian Intetnational Film Festival (Official Selection)
In Mandarin
109 minutes
