A Woman A Gun and a Noodle Shop

Did you know that Yimou Zhang remade the Coen Brothers' "Blood Simple" in China? In some quarters it's known as "Yimou Zhang's Blood Simple" while elsewhere it has been rechristened "A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop". Yimou, of course, was at one time a director to be reckoned with, perhaps more famous internationally than even the Coens are now, (his "Raise the Red Lantern" is one of the masterpieces of world cinema), so we had every right to have had high hopes of this remake of what was a brilliant, if minor, Coen Brothers classic. Unfortunately, this is much closer to a black farce with none of the terror of the first "Blood Simple".

Visually it's a terrific looking film, which is as we might expect from its director. Few directors in the history of cinema have used colour as expressively as Yimou but there's no substance here. This is just a piece of pulp fiction Chinese-style with the comedy falling flat and the suspense singularly lacking. Today the Coen Brothers' film is now considered one of the great debuts in American film and it will be remembered as such long after this is forgotten.

I watched this in Berlin at the Festival there and unfortunately I was sitting near an older couple who were commenting on the movie. You read this right, they were old and commenting on what happened on screen in a despicable way. Their view of the film is also the view some others have (see the rating for that), still it was a bit annoying hearing them while watching.

One of the most common point that gets criticized, is that this is not worthy for a man like Yimou. I don't think it is fair to write something like that, but it's always how a viewer will watch this movie. With what expectation one goes into a movie. If you let yourself see through the comedic set pieces and the absurdity of most of them (you could call it slapstick, a movie that would be considered a master piece in another era of movie making), you can see a very human drama.

Not only that, but many human flaws that are on display here, that are hiding behind the comedy. What is not hiding though, is the phenomenal cinematography. The colors, the set pieces (designs) and the choreographed action is all in place here. There's even symbolism here, that I didn't catch (read some of the other reviews for that, the ones with a spoiler tag). A movie that you can enjoy as a silly comedy, or as a high concept drama ... or of course dismiss entirely as "silly".

Who would have thought that Zhang Yimou, once art house darling and for trying too hard at the martial arts genre, could be capable of pulling off an all-out, slapstick black comedy with A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop? It certainly took my by surprise, and showed that he's more than willing and capable of stepping outside his comfort zone, to remake what's essentially The Coen Brother's Blood Simple, albeit set in a period Chinese era and in context as well, with the bar in an unnamed Texas town becoming a noodle shop out in a desert.

And paying homage to The Coens isn't just the only one here. Curiously, the finale sequence was very similar to how Danny Boyle decided to end Slumdog Millionaire, with an out of place song and dance sequence that became more absurd as the clip ticked by. Serving little purpose other than to get everyone lip sync, dance, spin some dough, break the 4th fall and essentially telling us that everyone had a swell time making the film, I thought this could be done without since the end was quite pitch perfect.

Beginning with an introduction to the important plot element of introducing a gun into the story, a group of Persian merchants come into Wang's (Ni Dahong) noodle shop to sell some wares, and ultimately Wang's Wife (Yan Ni) decides to buy a three-barrelled gun. Nobody knows what for, and a cannon demonstration brings forth the local police, whose chief investigator Zhang (Sun Honglei) gets engaged in an expensive scheme by Wang to finish off his adulterous wife and her lover, employee Li (Xiao Shen-Yang). But of course things never go according to plan, especially when everyone has their own agenda, and it becomes one heck of a comedic blood bath with motivations questioned, and you the audience left wondering just how everyone will get out of this mess.

Zhang Yimou once again goes for very saturated colour schemes for his films, from the rich blues of the skies to the orange-brown sands of the desert land, and this time too keeping his characters in single-toned striking colours. If anyone doubts the director in being able to helm a comedy, the opening scene itself will allay those fears, and indeed much of the physical comedy come thanks to the wonderful casting, especially that of the two bumbling shop assistants caught up in the complicated events only because they're looking toward settling their back pay.

It highlights how men become easily tempted by money, the root of all evil, when faced with bucket-loads of them, and how coincidences play a huge part in getting the characters where they end up, with each unfortunate moment ending in becoming a corpse (yes, there will be blood, and death) in a seemingly convoluted narrative that has to be seen to be believed the kind of rich writing which can pull it off. But what I enjoyed more, is how modern day devices are given the old fashioned treatment, such as the police "siren" - horse mounted and wind-generated - and a combination lock, designed with an abacus, no less!

A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop may seem like a less than epic film from Zhang Yimou, but it sure is a lot of fun delivered by its outstanding casting who seem all too comfortable in dishing out black and physical humour. Recommended, just so you know that the director has the bandwidth to do a lot more than what his filmography thus far has pigeon-holed him into.

It's like this: Whether you know what goes into constructing a story because you've done so yourself or because you've just seen and/or read so many of them that the formulas are embedded in your mind, a lot of times it's tough not to look where they don't mean for you to look, the marionette wires maneuvering it, the groundwork holding it all up. When you remake a merely twenty-year-old cult classic by filmmakers with an enormous cult following, a story everybody knows, it's one thing to tell the story in a different style, or to change certain things, but anachronizing everything to an arbitrarily different time period, culture and characters, we are only really looking for all the anachronisms, waiting for them, being let down, occasionally being gratified.

The time period is never specified, but what I expected was going to lead to interesting dramatic twists on the Coens' plot was that it begins with the sale of a gun, which the cheating wife and the ridiculous slapstick moron noodle-makers find foreign and unheard-of. The gun is apparently a pretty new invention. But Yimou, who normally cares profoundly about his characters, loses his passionate emotional dominion over his actors. He dries out the original's sultriness, trades humid night for arid day, and strains for slapstick. That would be perfectly fine if he traded those elements in for something just as or hopefully more effective, but he does not.

The Coens' original Gothic film noir, fanged and toxic like snake venom, dwindles here to the point of amateur slapstick. Though the exterior shots make almost psychedelically atmospheric use of red and orange sandstone, day for night, sunrise and sunset, the characters are never more than ugly, overwrought cartoons. I'll admit that Blood Simple was not the quintessence of character arc. Nobody really seemed to change in that film, despite having a wryly farcical lack of conception as to what's happening. So at the outset of A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, when the adulterous lover, originally played by John Getz, is a redefining coward, I was pleased, because, knowing what this character must later do, I felt I was in for a true character transformation. To describe the outcome without spoilers: No such luck.

Aside from its inevitable comparison---one of the reasons, in hindsight, it's fated to be a letdown---Noodle Shop is simultaneously frantic and dull, with no hint of the restraint or meticulous concern with form exhibited in Yimou's own earlier blockbusters. Like Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, and even as early as Ju Dou, the stars of the show are ultimately Zhao Xiaoding's mostly gorgeous cinematography, Tao Jing's evocative sound design and Yimou's choice of otherworldly locations. But all its visual brightness and tonal goofiness are far from either the literal or conceptual darkness of the fundamental story. Most damning is that the effort to recreate the remarkable final shot of Blood Simple is so tacky and clumsy that I reflexively sighed in revulsion. Zhang needs to reconnect with the fierce, principled, humanistic sensibility that made him one of China's finest film artists.

So the result of this uneasy mix of ironic screwball affectation, particularly evident in the big comic close-ups, and Zhang's majestic but mostly show-offy imagery is triteness, artifice, unevenness, and pretension so immoderate and pointless as to have defiantly stylish interest. If the cast were comprised of John Waters, Elvira, Pee-Wee Herman and RuPaul, it would be less kitschy.

It starts just as a spaghetti western, but then comes a parody of spaghettis and samurai films with minimal use of dialogue and excessive extravaganza of imagery. While the scope of the film seems unbelievable, a little, simple story revolving some stupid stereotypes is going on. Starting with buying an imported gun, the premise recalls the emergence of modernism in traditional, moralist society as it happens in too many samurai ventures, but the concept is contrarily based on the consequences of reliance on such bad habits as greed and jealousy. Not as promising as his RAISE THE RED LANTERN and JU DUO, not inspiring as his LA VIE and HERO, Zhang Yimou's A WOMAN, A GUN AND A NOODLE SHOP is an eccentric experience by a cineaste assumed as a master: crazy, wild and frantic, but not trying to tell a story in the size of epic