Initial release: March 28, 2012
Director: Simon Chung
Music composed by: Sebastian Seidel
Producer: Simon Chung
Cast: Pierre-Mathieu Vitali, Yu Yung Yung, Gao Qilun, Jian Jiang, Hua Li, Yu Ting Si Tu, Shu Ling Lang, Shao Qiu Shen
Screenplay: Simon Chung, Yulai Lu
MOVIE INFO
A guy is found by the police swimming naked. He can't, or refuses to, speak and is sent to a hospital. Since no diagnosis can be made, he will be transferred to a mental hospital, when his male nurse decides to take another route. Slowly the reason for his speechlessness becomes clear. Together with the nurse's girlfriend and a female friend of the silent stranger, their history is explained.
Cảnh sát nhìn thấy một gã thanh niên bơi lội trần truồng. Anh ta không thể nói, hay không chịu nói, và được gởi tới một bệnh viện. Vì không thể thực hiện chẩn đoán được, anh ta được chuyển tới một bệnh viện tâm thần, đó là lúc nam y tá của anh ta quyết định làm một điều gì khác. Dần dần lý do cho việc không nói được trở nên sáng tỏ. Cùng với bạn gái của viên y tá, và một bạn gái của người thanh niên xa lạ không nói được này, quá khứ của họ được giải thích.
The film opens with the discovery of a naked man from the West (French actor Matthieu Vital) along the banks of a Chinese river. Taken into custody by the local police, the stranger seems either unwilling or unable to speak. He is transferred to a hospital, where a cute, kindly orderly, Jiang (Gao Qilon), takes an interest in him. When Jiang learns the new patient is to be committed to a psychiatric asylum, he decides to spirit him away to his uncle’s remote home in the country.
fAlthough the stranger remains speechless (hence the film’s title), the two men bond further and even sleep together in a non-sexual way. Jiang gradually begins to discover clues to his new friend’s past. This leads to the recounting of a secondary love story between Luke — which is eventually revealed to be the patient’s name — and a fellow university student named Han (the very attractive Jiang Jian). Unfortunately, Han has a girlfriend, Ning (Yu Yung Yung), who proves to be dangerously jealous.
Filmed in Mandarin with English subtitles, Speechless provides an intriguing exploration of modern Chinese culture’s acceptance (or lack thereof) of homosexuality and of East-West relations in general. While there is a minimal amount of sex in the film, what is depicted is about as graphic as a Chinese filmmaker dare show lest they risk the censors’ wrath. And whereas the romance between Han and the then-still speaking Luke is engrossing, it is the more subtle growth in love and understanding between silent Luke and Jiang that has stayed with me. Chung also gets strong yet sensitive performances from his young cast members. See Speechless, and join me in continuing to keep an eye on its bold, talented director.
MQFF REVIEW: Speechless (2012, Dir. Simon Chung)
I should warn you going into this review that I cannot speak with complete authority when it comes to Speechless (Wu yan). I have to admit that I wasn't entirely awake the whole way through. In my defence I was never actually asleep either; I was more... I guess drifting is the best word. Even though my experience with the film is, shall we say, sketchy, I am still going to review it - I'm a completist. And, let's face it, festival fatigue is a large part of festival going and Speechless was a 9 pm screening on the seventh straight day in the cinema. All of this is a roundabout way of warning you not to take my opinion here as gospel (not that I'd ever expect you to anyway).
Speechless opens with a young Caucasian man (Pierre-Matthieu Vital) found naked by a river in rural China. Though seemingly lucid, the man refuses to speak and the police, frustrated in their attempts to ascertain his identity, eventually move him to the local hospital for examination. As the young man settles into the ward, he begins to grow close to Jiang (Gao Qilun), one of the hospital nurses and when the authorities signal their intentions to move their still-silent prisoner to a mental institution, Jiang busts him out. Together they attempt to unravel the truth about the young man's identity and the events that led up to his arrest.
In the plight of the stray Westerner, writer/director Simon Chung and his co-writer, Lu Yulai, have created an intriguing puzzle and wound it around itself to create a film that focuses heavily on the concept of identity without providing much narrative space for the characters to build one for themselves. Vital makes for a captivating focal point film; he puts out a curious energy (for the most part entirely blank but with hints of damage leaking through), which is enough to keep the film's slow moving first half engaging but doesn't give too much for the rest of the cast to play off and their characters feel similarly blank as a result.
This blankness of character carries over to the film as a whole. Speechless is well shot (from what I could tell, the copy provided to MQFF was embarrassingly poor quality) but never manages to exert a real sense of personality. Much like the main character, the film's structure is reticent to let the audience in. For the bulk of the run time, the overbearing concern (for the police, for the doctors and for Jiang) is the discovery of their foundling's identity and, once the film makers see fit to lay his story bare, they do so in extended flashbacks (a distancing technique in itself), which introduce more characters and more relationships. Although it is ambitious to attempt to draw audience sentiment so late in the piece, it is not particularly successful; put simply, it is difficult to become involved in Speechless after the film has been so resolutely coy for more than an hour. It all adds up to a film that, while never dull, never really engages either.
★★☆
Speechless screened as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2013.
Speechless opens with a young Caucasian man (Pierre-Matthieu Vital) found naked by a river in rural China. Though seemingly lucid, the man refuses to speak and the police, frustrated in their attempts to ascertain his identity, eventually move him to the local hospital for examination. As the young man settles into the ward, he begins to grow close to Jiang (Gao Qilun), one of the hospital nurses and when the authorities signal their intentions to move their still-silent prisoner to a mental institution, Jiang busts him out. Together they attempt to unravel the truth about the young man's identity and the events that led up to his arrest.
In the plight of the stray Westerner, writer/director Simon Chung and his co-writer, Lu Yulai, have created an intriguing puzzle and wound it around itself to create a film that focuses heavily on the concept of identity without providing much narrative space for the characters to build one for themselves. Vital makes for a captivating focal point film; he puts out a curious energy (for the most part entirely blank but with hints of damage leaking through), which is enough to keep the film's slow moving first half engaging but doesn't give too much for the rest of the cast to play off and their characters feel similarly blank as a result.
This blankness of character carries over to the film as a whole. Speechless is well shot (from what I could tell, the copy provided to MQFF was embarrassingly poor quality) but never manages to exert a real sense of personality. Much like the main character, the film's structure is reticent to let the audience in. For the bulk of the run time, the overbearing concern (for the police, for the doctors and for Jiang) is the discovery of their foundling's identity and, once the film makers see fit to lay his story bare, they do so in extended flashbacks (a distancing technique in itself), which introduce more characters and more relationships. Although it is ambitious to attempt to draw audience sentiment so late in the piece, it is not particularly successful; put simply, it is difficult to become involved in Speechless after the film has been so resolutely coy for more than an hour. It all adds up to a film that, while never dull, never really engages either.
★★☆
Speechless screened as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2013.
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