Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Qiu Yang
Starring: Yu Aier, Di Shike, Wei Yibo, Xu Tianyi, Gu Tingxiu, Qin Dan, Xu Yun
"Into each life, some rain must fall
Too much is falling in mine
Into each heart, some tears must fall
Someday the sun will shine."
So sang Ella Fitzgerald and The Ink Spots on their 1944 hit 'Into Each
Life Some Rain Must Fall'.
A whole lot of rain falls on Cai (Yu Aier), the put-upon
protagonist of writer/director Qiu Yang's feature
debut Some Rain Must Fall, but there's no suggestion that the sun is set to shine any time soon.
Yang shot his movie during a glum Chinese winter with darkness descending
before kids have finished their school day, and the overcast skies that
line the top third of many of his shots hover over what is an exercise in
unrelenting miserabilism.
When grey skies aren't literally looming over Cai, metaphorical clouds
certainly are. The film's narrative plays out over the course of a
particularly awful week for this fortysomething middle class housewife. It
all kicks off when Cai attends her teenage daughter Lin's (Di Shike) basketball practice and accidentally knocks out an elderly woman when
she aggressively lobs a ball back at some kids. The woman is hospitalised
and it's uncertain if she'll recover. The accidental victim's working
class family - referred to as "fucking peasants" by Cai's
husband Ding (Wei Yibo) - immediately begin a campaign of harassment in
the hopes of pressuring Cai into financial compensation.
It's the last thing Cai needs on her plate right now. She's just filed
divorce papers. Her daughter is striking out at her by threatening to
drop out of the basketball team, thus jeopardising the essential extra
credits she needs for a college place. She's left at home each day with
her increasingly senile mother-in-law. Her own elderly father is
terminally ill and his home helper wants to leave the role of his
nursemaid. The only moments of tenderness come from Cai's housekeeper,
whose physical intimacy suggests a longing Cai is unwilling to allow
herself to indulge.
Yang, who scooped the top prize at Cannes a few years back with one of
his acclaimed shorts, seems to draw inspiration from a particularly
European school of misery for his first feature. With its unrelenting
bleakness, Some Rain Must Fall bears the influence of the likes of Von Trier, Haneke and Seidl,
filmmakers who are often reductively accused of simply torturing their
(usually female) protagonists like cruel children burning ants with a
magnifying glass. Such a read is to ignore the emotional and
psychological insight of their films, though it's understandable why
many viewers might wish to shun such uneasy material. With Yang's debut
however it's difficult to mine anything more profound than a nihilistic
"shit happens" philosophy. Yang may shoot his film in a detached
arthouse style but he piles so much baggage on the shoulders of his
protagonist that the film becomes an overbearing melodrama nonetheless.
Just when you think he can't shoehorn any more angst into his drama,
Yang will have Cai recite a depressing monologue about some terrible
tragedy that occurred in her past. At a certain point there's so much
wretchedness to keep track of that you simply stop caring and the film
loses whatever impact its initial setup might have offered.
A significant portion of the audience will likely bail on Yang's film
before it reaches its conclusion, but there are some rewards here for
those willing to indulge Some Rain Must Fall. Yang composes his shots in a manner that reflects his protagonist's
emotional deadness, often obscuring her face with door frames or angling
his camera in a way that forces us to focus on the coldness of her
cheekbones rather than the expressiveness of her eyes. The movie's
highlight is a wonderfully expressionist tracking shot that follows Cai
as she walks past the school basketball court, the fading lights of
which signal her own impending invisibility. Touches like this get
across Yang's point regarding how many women begin to fade into the
shadows when they reach middle age. It's a valid statement, but one
that's made in a way most viewers will consider punishing rather than
enlightening.
