By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Vivian Qu
Starring: He Wenchao | Hou Yong | Li Xinghong | Liu Tiejian | Lu Yulai | Xiang Qun | Zhao Xiaofei
Original language title: Shuiyin jie
Country: china
Year: 2014
Running time: 93
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3138596/combined
Kyle says: “TRAP STREET marks the directorial debut of Vivian Qu, who has a substantial resumé as a producer of Chinese films. This a tale of the gray areas between surveying and surveillance, as young Li Quiming (Lu Yulai) happily goes about his job of surveying the streets for digital maps, while moonlighting with part-time installation of spyware or removing ‘bugs’ from the homes of wealthy clients, in part because he owes his father a substantial amount of money. His real enthusiasms are for pursuing girls and playing video games, until he meets the temptingly mysterious girl of his dreams (He Wenchao) who works in an area that seems not to be on the map grid. ‘Look at this dump: What’s left to survey?!’ is a loaded question that should set off warning bells. Li Quiming and Guan Lifen commence dating, his happiness clear, hers not so much, while the audience waits for her to share with him a mystery she never does. He suddenly finds himself under interrogation for implied theft of State secrets. All the genre tropes will be instantly familiar to fans of film noir, although the dryness of Chinese authoritarian investigation has some freshness. Unfortunately we lose interest in who is maintaining surveillance upon whom and for which reasons, having seen this story many times previously. While the plot and characters ultimately fail to be compelling, the details of Kafka-esque paranoia are provocative in this contemporary Chinese version.
“The Q & A following the screening once again raised the absorbing issue of the moderator and audience’s exchanges with the director being more engrossing than the screening itself. In this case, Vivian Qu is a well-known Chinese producer making her debut as a writer and director. She stated that her idea for the film is a synthesis of her thoughts and observations, following the many changes in Chinese society after the 2008 Olympics, with regard to increased State control of the Internet, texts and e-mails, and citizens ‘disappearing’ for 36 hours. She asks whether there is a clear line between protection and intrusion? This is a question now being debated throughout much of the world thanks to the work of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Ms. Qu works in a rigidly controlled industry supervised by SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film and Television), also known as the State Censors. She disclosed that SARFT initially approved her script, believing it to be ‘a love story.’ Although she claimed to be totally uninterested in politics, she seemed myopic or reticent about our questions as to what will happen to her film and to her career when SARFT sees it. Without the stamp it must receive in order to be exhibited in China, the intriguing conclusion to be reached is that she is content to have shown the film in dozens of film festivals throughout the world, and TRAP STREET in its current incarnation (or any version) will never be seen in China. 3.5 cats
“Seen Friday, March 28, 2014, New Directors/New Films at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York.”
Jason says: “A trap street is a non-existent road placed on a map so that cartographers will be able to tell when competitors have copied their work rather than surveying the area independently. It’s not a common term in film noir, but it certainly could be – how many of these movies have been named for some location that ensnares good people in a web of deceit and danger? While this movie (‘Shuiyun jie’ in Mandarin) doesn’t look much like a traditional entry in that genre, it’s what those movies become when transplanted to twenty-first century China.
“Nanjing, specifically, where Li Qiuming (Lu Yulai) is a trainee at a surveying firm, working with Zhang Sheng (You Yong) to gather GPS data for a digital map. At the corner of Forest Lane, he meets Guan Lifen (He Wenchao), and is smitten right away. It seems like just a simple meet-cute, except that the system won’t accept the coordinates for Forest Lane, Lifen works for something called ‘Lab 203’, and Qiuming earns extra money working with his roommates doing freelance work detecting and installing surveillance equipment.
“When director Vivian Qu submitted the script to China’s censorship bureau, it was as a love story, and it actually works well along those lines during the first half – Qiuming is an upbeat young guy going after a girl out of his league, and Lifen quickly comes across as friendly even if she does sort of look past Qiuming in their initial encounters. And while the story requires Lifen to be somewhat mysterious as just sophisticated enough to be difficult for Qiuming to connect with, he at least is given a broad cast of supporting characters – parents, roommates, co-workers – for supplying encouragement and advice which he won’t necessarily heed. It’s cute, charming, and often very funny.
“And then something happens which turns the whole thing on its head, as a seemingly innocuous event leads to Qiuming being detained and interrogated, and from there, what humor is left goes from light to dark. Qu zeroes in on the circular logic of ‘we only investigate the guilty’, as well as the contradiction in how secrets, free-flowing information, and surveillance by both government agencies and private individuals are all trying to exist at once. She positions Qiuming as a member of the younger generation that takes communication and openness for granted, even in a place like China, and the idea that a place like Forest Lane can exist – that it can be right there where everyone can see it but people will act like it’s not there – shakes him to the core. From a certain point on, paranoia becomes the default setting of the film, as any shot where the vantage point doesn’t move might be from a spy camera, and even the monkeys in the park seem to be hiding from something. Suspicion sticks to everyone, as the accused loses the trust of others and even the ability to enjoy what had made him happy before.
“Lu Yulai does a fine job of showing how that change affects Qiuming; he’s a cheerful goof in the beginning even though we can see that he’s not completely carefree, and he’s able to chip away the right pieces of that until we see what’s left of him at the end. Zhao Xiaofei and Hou Yong make interesting contrasts as Qiuming’s stern father and his understanding but more experienced mentor at the surveying firm. And while He Wenchao certainly doesn’t play Lifen as any sort of femme fatale, at least not overtly, there’s something reserved about her that can work as both the sort of mystery that pulls a man in and the potential for being part of something dangerous.
“TRAP STREET is seldom hard-boiled or particularly twisty; by the time it ends, it is arguably still a love story, if not the type that it starts out as. It’s also a surprisingly universal one – surveillance and secrecy are the main tools of control everywhere, and the inherent contradiction exacerbated by the too-human people involved is always going to make for an interesting conflict. 4 cats
“Seen 24 April 2014 in The Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston, digital).”