Good Cats
Dir: Ying Liang
The first in the NW Film Center's "Lens on China" series, Good Cats takes its title from Deng Xiaopeng's famous free-market cheer, "It doesn't matter if it is a black cat or a white cat. As long as it can catch mice, it's a good cat." The repurcussions of running a society on such a principle can be harsh, and they all seem to be falling at once upon the head of Luo Liang, a hapless country lad trying to make his way in the big city. His wife is shrill and disappointed, his boss goes from ruthless to pathetic with alarming speed, his mentor is suicidal and constantly asks him for loans, his motorcycle never runs and his apartment is literally crumbling around him. Not helping is the fact that every so often a Chinese indie-rock band (Lamb's Funeral) appears in the film and performs a lyrically relevant song. Luo's company is in the business of orchestrating land grabs by bribing small-town bureaucrats to kick peasants off their farms. But the bribes seem valueless, and deals are constantly falling apart; no one, including or especially the boss, ever seems to know what's going on. The humor here is bleak and depressing, and the film's insistence on wide-angle-only keeps the viewer in the position of distant observer. That makes the movie a bit difficult to get into, but it's worth trying, if only for the rare incisiveness of Ying's satire on the contradictions and impossibilities of modern China.
Check the KBOO Movie Talk blogs for other highlights from the "Lens on China" series, including Ying Liang's 2006 film The Other Half (showing Oct 1).