Old Shanghai Made New
"Shanghai Rumba," the new movie by director Peng Xiaolian, departs from the typical cinematic depiction of go-go Old Shanghai. While many films revisit "Paris of the East, Whore of the Orient" clichés about the city -- think bankers, gangsters and courtesans -- Ms. Peng hones in on the city's thriving but struggling artistic scene, spinning a love story amid social chaos. It's a typically inventive story line from the independent director, who is as unusual as her films.
Ms. Peng's latest film is a movie-within-a-movie, inspired by the romance between 1940s Shanghai movie star Zhao Dan and starlet Huang Zongying on the set of "Crows and Sparrows" (Wuya yu Maque), a 1949 film. The Zhao Dan character (played by Xia Yu) is an intellectual heartthrob -- an actor, writer, and director. The film he directs is not far removed from the reality outside the studio, as it shows neighbors in a crowded Shanghai apartment building coping with the upheavals of pre-revolutionary China -- civil war and spiraling inflation.
Peng Xiaolian Shooting a movie . . . about shooting a movie.
The Zhao Dan character's delicate flirtations with ingenue actress Wan Yu (played by Yuan Quan) contrast with his hardscrabble life behind the scenes. Few viewers knew at the time that Mr. Zhao, for all his fame, was nearly penniless. Facing the same difficulties as many other artists working in 1940s Shanghai, Mr. Zhao's progressive filmmaking was frustrated under the repressive rule of the Kuomintang.
The most alluring storyline of "Shanghai Rumba," however, lies in the making of the movie (about the making of a movie), and in the director herself. Despite the movie's mainstream appeal -- and its wide release throughout China -- director Peng Xiaolian produced it independent of a studio. Her achievement, in part, is to have overcome the budgetary constraints and censorship fears that usually relegate Chinese indie films to obscurity. Ms. Peng is the only director in China occupying the territory between mainstream and indie cinema.
In "Shanghai Rumba," Ms. Peng's distinctive storytelling touch comes through. Even while working with a period set, she eschews theatrics and focuses on the gentle unfolding of a personal story. She is a realist trained in documentary filmmaking, but she avoids the in-your-face grittiness and rambling artsyness of most realist directors in China.
Ms. Peng's current fame rests on her depictions of realistic, ordinary lives set in Shanghai. But she took a roundabout path to return to the city of her birth. Born in Shanghai to an intellectual family, she saw her father -- a writer and political dissident -- sent to jail, where he died. Her mother, a translator of Russian films, was stigmatized for her husband's political activities, and her work was never credited in the films she worked on.
Like many in her generation, Ms. Peng was "sent down" to the countryside for nine years during the Cultural Revolution. She graduated in 1982 from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, alongside other now-prominent directors like Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou and Tian Zhuanzhuang -- a group later dubbed the "Fifth Generation" by critics. Moving abroad, she completed a Masters of Fine Arts at New York University, and afterwards moved to Japan to become a disciple of Japanese master documentarian Shiksuke Ogawa. One of the four books she has written, "Confusion of Idealism," is an homage to Mr. Ogawa.
Since returning to Shanghai in 1996, however, Ms. Peng has turned her artistic attentions almost exclusively to her native city. "Shanghai Rumba" represents the completion of her "Shanghai Trilogy." The trilogy's first movie, 2002's "Shanghai Women" (Jiazhuang Mei Ganjue), involves a divorced mother and her teenage daughter navigating social stigma and economic change. The second, 2004's "Shanghai Story" (Meili Shanghai), depicts four adult children discussing the Cultural Revolution around their mother's sickbed.
"From a Fifth Generation point of view, these works seem somewhat old-fashioned," says Paul Clark, head of the School of Asian Studies at the University of Auckland. "But her fifth-generation classmates have long abandoned their own early phase and also taken new routes. In most cases these have been commercial, which is not true of Peng. Her literary focus sets her apart from contemporary indies like Luo Ye." Ms. Peng's critics accuse her of being too nostalgic and of misrepresenting modern life in bustling Shanghai. But these critiques don't seem to faze her.
"Shanghai Story" won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor at 2005's Golden Roosters, China's most prestigious film awards.
Her next project traces a love story of the legendary, recently deceased writer Ba Jin. "I wrote this script almost 20 years ago," she said. "I realized that it was difficult to shoot, because the script talked too directly about the Cultural Revolution, so I changed the way to write about Ba Jin and had to wait." Public discussion of the Cultural Revolution remains taboo in China. Even the mention of it in "Shanghai Story" pushed the envelope.
"I'm ready to go ahead now," said Ms. Peng, "but cautiously."
旧上海 新诠释
中国导演彭小莲的新作《上海伦巴》没有沿袭以往表现旧上海风貌影片的路子，去描绘那些“东方巴黎”式的风情──银行家、黑社会、交际花你方唱罢我登场的花团锦簇，而是深入到这座城市方兴未艾却又在苦苦挣扎的艺术家团体中，精心描绘了一场社会大动荡背景下曲折委婉的爱情故事。这往往是彭小莲这类独立导演们颇具创造力的选题思路。
这是一部影片中的影片，灵感来自四十年代上海电影明星赵丹和新星黄宗英在出演《乌鸦与麻雀》期间擦出爱火花的经历。夏雨饰演片中的赵丹，这个角色集演员、作家和导演集于一身，胸中激荡著艺术的激情。他执导的影片紧贴当时的现实，描绘了解放前大上海拥挤楼宇中几户人家的悲欢。当时的上海正在内战的烽火和飞涨的物价中挣扎。
赵丹的角色与袁泉饰演的初涉银幕的女主角婉玉之间情愫暗生，但在现实生活中却狼狈不堪。观众很少知道当时的赵丹除了在银幕上的鼎鼎大名之外几乎一无所有。和四十年代上海滩面临困境的众多文艺界人士一样，赵丹的影片拍摄工作也屡屡遭到国民党的压制。
《上海伦巴》最吸引人的地方在于它的构思（描述了一个拍电影的过程）以及导演自身。尽管颇具主流意识，也在中国各地热映，彭小莲这部作品仍然是独立制作的。她的成就可以部分归结为克服了紧张预算的压力和电影审查的阴影。很多中国的独立影片都因为电影审查制度而走入地下，彭小莲是唯一游走于主流和独立之间中间线路的中国导演。
这部影片充分体现了彭小莲高超的故事演绎技巧。虽然是在表现一个特定的时代背景，她仍然成功讲述了一段细腻委婉的个人情感经历。她接受过专业的纪录片拍摄训练，但还是避免了生硬的说教，是中国现实派导演中最具艺术气质的一位。
彭小莲的名声来自她对上海普通人现实生活的真实表现。但她回归上海这个生身之地却走了一条弯路。她出生于上海的一个知识分子家庭，父亲是一位作家，因对时局看法不同而被捕入狱，死于狱中。她的母亲从事苏联影片的译制工作，因受累于丈夫的政治活动，从未在自己译制的影片上留名。
与同代人一样，彭小莲在文化大革命期间被“下放”到农村，待了9年。1982年，她毕业于中国著名的北京电影学院(Beijing Film Academy)，与后来蜚声海内外的第五代导演们──陈凯歌、张艺谋和田壮壮等──同年毕业。然后她出国求学，在纽约大学(New York University)获得硕士学位，随后又到日本，求学于著名的纪录片大师小川绅介(Shiksuke Ogawa)。她的四本著作之一《Confusion of Idealism》就是向小川绅介的敬礼。
1996年，彭小莲回到上海，几乎将自己所有的艺术情怀全部投射到这里。《上海伦巴》是她的“上海三部曲”的终结篇，前两部分别是2002年的《假装没感觉》和2004年的《美丽上海》。前者讲述一位离婚母亲和十几岁的女儿在社会歧视和经济变迁中挣扎求生的故事，后者描绘了四位成年儿女在母亲的病床前探讨文革的场景。
“从第五代的观点来看，这些作品多少都有些过时了，”奥克兰大学(University of Auckland)亚洲研究学院(School of Asian Studies)主任保罗?克拉克认为，“但她的第五代同行早就摒弃了自己早期的观念，也在尝试新方式，很多时候都是商业化的转型。但彭小莲并不是。她与娄烨等当代独立影人明显不同。”批评彭小莲的观点认为她过于怀旧了，误读了当代上海的繁荣。但这些批评对她似乎毫无影响。
《美丽上海》一举夺得2005年中国电影金鸡奖最佳影片、最佳导演、最佳女主角和最佳配角四项大奖。
她的下一个目标是表现刚刚去世的中国著名作家巴金的爱情故事。“二十多年前我就写好剧本了，”她说，“我知道很难投拍，因为剧本对文革的表现很直接，所以我改动了描述巴金的方式，还必须耐心等待。”在当代中国，对文革的讨论仍属禁忌。即使在《美丽上海》中提到文革也已经属于大胆的尝试。“我已经准备好了，”彭小莲说，“很谨慎。”
Lisa Movius
