[Film Review] Her Story (2024)
Second feature film from Chinese female director Shao Yihui - whose debut B FOR BUSY (2021) is both a box office sleeper and a critical darling for its sharp-tongued witticism and a holistic rendition of Shanghai life and culture - HER STORY, judging by its title, is manifest about female experiences, and its protagonists are 2 adult women and 1 school-age girl.
Wang Tiemei (Song) is a single mother who recently gives up her vocation as a journalist, juggles her life between a career woman (as the current editor of a small-fry public account on social media) and raising her daughter Moli (Zeng) in the metropolis Shanghai. Newly relocating into an old building, the pair clicks with Xiao Ye (Zhong), their neighbor upstairs, a sound engineer who also moonlights as the lead singer of a local band, whose rudderless life finds some sort of focus as the three form a close bond, helping each other out and together fending off the society’s deep-rooted prejudice against the fairer sex.
HER STORY is an effervescent rectification of the pejorative term of“chick flick”, it is irrefragably women-centered, transfused with ebullient wisecracks and punchlines that boldly and wittily subverts and refutes the gender convention and normalization. A heated debate about the menstrual period, the jocose mockery of masculine competition, a rib-tickling sapphic misunderstanding, Moli’s sortie into becoming a drummer doesn’t wind up as a mawkish inspiration but a grounded self-examination of what she really wants and what she is actually good at. There is absolutely nothing wrong to just be a spectator. From A to Z, a genuine mother-daughter rapport, a cordially sororal communion can be tangibly felt. Even the common through line of romantic relationship is garnished with a striking feminist affirmation. That said, Shao retains her propitious perception by designing a trio of flawed yet amusingly goofy male roles that even from the perspective of the most inveterate macho, HER STORY isn’t aiming to deride or antagonize the sterner sex, but to invite them to have an introspection regarding the society’s shibboleths, to stimulate more discussions among manospheres, and to inspire a more harmonious comprehension about the gender cognitive dissonance.
Intelligently envisaging and formulating a light-hearted, cliché-bucking diegesis and mining its urban-chic milieu, HER STORY also boosts an astonishingly arresting dramatis personae. Song Jia has never been more engrossing and versatile in such a comic environment, flaunting her confidence and exasperation with incomparable felicity (her valiant stance on a balance bike is a potent manifesto of indomitability) whereas Elane Zhong embroiders Xiao Ye’s love-wanting misery with a veneer of tenderness and self-awareness that is most affecting and sincere. Zeng Mumei, the daughter of well-known actress Mei Ting, is quite a corker as a sympathetic one-liner deliverer, and weds a child’s innocence with a coruscating precociousness that isn’t contaminated by affectations.
On the spear side, Mark Zhao’s ex-husband of Tiemei, is a surprising fount of lulz, emanating a buffoonish energy as a newly proselytized, woman-respecting specimen who still acquires his learning curve peppered with contretemps. Zhang Yu, as Tiemei’s new lover, Xiao Ye’s bandmate and Moli’s drum teacher, makes a big production of his self-effacing charm to assume the role of a foil, an affidavit of support to the film’s jaundice-dismantling intention. As for Ren Bin, Xiao Ye’s situationship lover, is saturated in a soft touch that subdues his tomcatting conduct but mildly ridicule his complacent self-importance.
Hailed from Shanxi province, now cinematically notable for Pingyao International Film Festival, espoused by Jia Zhangke, whose art-house fame is also touched on as a passing quip, Shao Yihui can be legitimately heralded as an emergent force just what the doctor ordered in the still gender-biased Chinese cinema. Just looking at the superb sound montage she manages to compile together, to reflect a mother’s laborious domestic activities through her daughter’s boundless imagination. An ingenious invention that should be more than enough to convince any funder to munificently put their money where their mouth is, for Shao’s next feature, a golden opportunity further bolstered by HER STORY’s bullish box office proceeds (currently, the No. 1 film in the mainland China, projecting to gross near $100 million).
referential entries: Long Fei’s G FOR GAP (2024, 7.3/10); Johnnie To’s OFFICE (2015, 6.2/10); Greta Gerwig’s BARBIE (2023, 8.2/10).
English Title: Her Story
Original Title: Hao dong xi 好东西
Year: 2024
Genre: Comedy
Country: China
Language: Mandarin
Director/Screenwriter/Editor: Shao Yihui 邵艺辉
Music: Wen Zi 文子
Cinematography: Chen Jun 陈军
Cast:
Song Jia 宋佳
Elane Zhong 钟楚曦
Zeng Mumei 曾慕梅
Zhang Yu 章宇
Mark Chao 赵又廷
Ren Bin 任彬
Wang Ju 王菊
Zhang Chi 张弛
Zhou Yemang 周野芒
Anton 安栋
Jiang Yi 蒋易
Maya Feng 冯玛娅
Kong Lianshun 孔连顺
Rating: 8.2/10
