An episodic feature chronicling a year in the lives of two slackers amidst the centuries-old alleyways of downtown Beijing, Dance Still is a minimalist mainland Chinese gem combining the existential crises of Waiting for Godot with the droll humour of Japanese manzai comedy to maximal cinematic effect.
More than just an entertaining experiment, however, this first fictional feature from the artistic duo Qin Muqiu and Zhan Hanqi also reflects on the mental state of young Chinese who choose to embrace current trends like tang ping (“lying flat”) and bai lan (“let it rot”), with the aim of defying the high expectations society has for them.
Throughout Dance Still, Dongsi (Yang Kaihang) and Shitiao (Qian Geng) talk about a lot of ridiculously useless things they plan to do: a version of Tetris in which lines never disappear, a city-wide survey about the soundproof qualities of public lavatories, a manual about the ways to survive a zombie outbreak. Being the slackers they are, these “projects” inevitably never come to fruition on screen, if ever; the one and only thing we manage to see them finish is a snowman – albeit one that comes without a nose or mouth and actually lies flat on the ground.
While this might seem a mere throwaway gag, the horizontal snowman is perhaps a wink at tang ping, a trending way of thinking in China in which young people choose to eschew ambitions and embrace indifference to the demands of contemporary life. Debate is raging about this worldview and its many mutations, and leaders of the Chinese Communist Party – most prominently among them being the Chinese president Xi Jinping – have moved quickly to discredit tang ping. But a distinct few have called for a better and more humane understanding of this lifestyle and what has contributed to its popularity among young people.
Well, Dance Still doesn’t really offer any answers to this question – and it would be unfair, of course, to demand this of directors Qin and Zhan. But what their first jointly directed fictional feature manages to do is to offer both local and international audiences a warm, humorous and empathetic glimpse of what life must be like for millennials who stand resolute against the massive tides of utilitarianism and turbo-charged capitalism, in a country hell-bent on becoming an economic and political superpower in the world today.
Comprising vignettes unfolding (and actually filmed) across four seasons between an odd couple of kids in Gulou, Beijing’s modern-day equivalent of a pre-gentrification East Village in New York, Dance Still is relentlessly funny from beginning to nearly the end. Some jokes revolving around Chinese puns and cultural trends might be a bit to local to travel, but watching the marvelous double act of Yang and Qian is in itself a wonder, with the former’s ditzy naivete bouncing really well off the latter’s moustached po-faced schtick. The fun of hearing Dongsi’s off-the-cliff, to-the-birds ideas will not be complete until we hear the perennially straight-faced Shitiao’s retorts to these loony proposals.
The closest US precedent or equivalent one could recall would probably be (of course!) Richard Linklater’s Slacker or Kevin Smith’s Clerks. But these exchanges mirror most closely the Japanese subgenre of manzai comedy and its myriad cinematic adaptations, the most obvious being Tatsushi Oomori’s 2016 comedy Seto & Utsumi, a film in which its two leading characters spend most of the time yapping about all and sundry without not doing that much. Dance Still‘s producers seem to be perfectly aware of their film’s appeal in Japan: according to the credits, Japanese subtitles have already been prepared. Chinese cinephiles have already spotted similarities between the two films too, like the way both titles combine the names of their characters to spell out the name of a particular locale (“Dongsi Shitiao” is a place in Beijing, while “Seto & Utsumi” is similar to the Seto Inland Sea.)
Filmed in old-school academy ratio and put together with a minimum of fancy edits and special effects, Dance Still is obviously a nod from the filmmakers to that more pleasant and less complicated thing called the past. But for the protagonists Dongsi and Shitiao, the passing time seems to be of no significance. As they sit around to natter about nothingness or commiserate over their pyrrhic spiritual victories – if we’re too lazy or poor to get a cigarette lighter, let’s celebrate we quit smoking for a day! – they seem like people who are nostalgic for a future which is yet to arrive, if it will at all. Just like Aki Kaurismäki, the filmmakers offer a deadpan, seemingly fatalistic ode to those who live in hope. With Yu Jianfan’s crisp editing and Di Zekai’s splendid cinematography – which ranges from comical close-ups of the two protagonists to a soul-stirring long shot tracking the pair’s spirited and determined march along a frozen river – Dance Still is a stylistic and emotional triumph against cinematic and social odds.
Directors, screenwriters: Qin Muqiu, Zhan Hanqi
Cast: Qian Geng, Yang Kaihang
Producers: Zhan Hanqi, Wang Weiyi, He Li, Liu Ruirui
Executive producer: Jia Shijun
Cinematography: Di Zekai
Editor: Yu Jianfan
Production designer: Zheng Yican
Music: Lin Yun, Gu Yu
Sound design: Li Duo, Li Zijie
Venue: Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival (Chinese Competition)
In Mandarin
90 minutes
