Hao duo da mi (2005)

Director:

Hongqi Li

Writer:

Hongqi Li (writer)

Genre:

Drama

Awards:

1 win

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Han Dong
Yaodong Zhang

Also Known As:

So Much Rice (USA)

Runtime:

France:78 min | Hong Kong:84 min | Argentina:80 min (Mar del Plata Film Festival)

Country:

China

Language:

Mandarin

Color:

Color | Black and White

Certification:

Argentina:13

Deadpan China

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

A very strange film- I think you'd have to be expert in contemporary Chinese culture to understand it- or to understand how you're not meant to understand it or meant to not understand it. It begins with a poem, telling of how Mr. Mao played hide-and-seek with his girlfriend. First she hid and he found her; then she told him to hide and he went out of the house and was never seen again. The film begins when Mao Liang- we do not know that he is the Mao in the poem- calls on He Youwei- an acquaintance of an acquaintance Mao has never met before- and is put up for as long as he wants to stay. Mao brings He- a low-ranking policeman- a martial arts truncheon. He picks up a girl, the pessimistic Zheng. The three of them make a song together, but when Mao says "From the beginning, together." the others burst out laughing. Mao makes strange mathematical calculations inspired by the noises of He and Zheng's sex; when He bullies Zheng and throws her out Mao beats up He- "for your own good", Mao explains and He seems to believe; Zheng returns- on Mao's advice- with a bag of rice; Mao and He go for walks together and see and strange things happen- when an old man's false teeth have been broken in a bicycle accident Mao happens to have a pair on him that fit, but the young man who caused the accident snatches them and breaks them; Mao has a nightmare- the film is in colour now and music appears- and Zheng says she likes MAo more than He; Mao says he must go, he is beginning to feel at home after seventeen days. He gives advice- which we never learn- to some of the characters and walks away with the bag of rice. Finally he abandons the rice and walks on. In the end, in the locker-room with a colleague, He is eating an apple where before he was smoking- was that the advice MAo gave him?- and suddenly He notices the camera and stares at it while the credits roll and a strange song is played.

The film is also strangely and ritualistically photographed in fixed long takes with a black screen between cuts to show time- a day, perhaps?- has passed. The camera moves twice in the whole film, each time pivoting to follow a man pushing a bicycle along the road. Except for a brief nightmare- is it Mao's nightmare? we see him wake up at the end, but it is not made plain that it is so- the whole film is in black and white; the only accompanying music in the film proper is in the nightmare itself. Ultimately it has no meaning except its existence and nor do the characters in it.