This 2006 black comedy from China is quite an event: an unprecedentedly bold, zany, comic-satiric farce. It hurtles at a frenzied pace through a bizarre yet completely plausible small town setting where political farce meets a bit of sex, a smattering of violence, and even a smidgen of kung fu.
It took first-time feature film director/writer Cao Baoping four years to get his script through China’s film censors, and it’s amazing that this story passed at all. Black Well Village in south-western Yunnan province is run by the four thoroughly nasty and corrupt Xiong brothers. Number Three (Wang Yanhui) is village mayor. He runs the place in collusion with Number One (Li Xiaobo), who uses farts as assaults, chillingly scary Number Two (Sun Qing O Kong Qingsan ), and Number Four (Zhu Yi), who affects the air of a would-be pimp. Their reign of petty intimidation keeps the honest villagers down until highly strung Party Secretary Ye Guangrong (Wu Gang), the hero of the film, reaches the limit of his tolerance. He peremptorily decides without authorization to overthrow the Xiongs.
Abetted by a colorful cast of potential rebels including a cuckolded butcher, a restauranteur turned spy, and a would-be thug who fancies himself a Shaolin Temple adept, Secretary Ye secretly organizes, over a zany, tension-ridden 24 hours, a complex plan of attack. The town’s menfolk, organized into 4 brigades of stick-wielding anti-Xiong forces, plan a lightning strike, but two kidnapped potential sex slaves, a pack of nasty dogs, and a posse of Keystone cops twist things in utterly zany directions.
The film’s relentless pace, nervous hand-held camera work, and rough, boisterous energy grabs the audience and doesn’t let go until the end. The Chinese title Guangrong de fennu, meaning, literally, “glorious anger”, captures some of the ambivalence of the film’s content and attitude. Wu Gang, a well-known serious stage actor in Beijing, plays the heroic though shockingly independent Party man as a bravely nervous wreck, all jittery energy and anxious charisma. His adversary Wang Yanhui as Mayor Xiong makes a fascinatingly cool and oddly attractive lead despot.
Is this rebellion as farce or is it comedy as politics? The Chinese film authorities took a bravely benign view of the proceedings and decided it was suitable enough for Chinese audiences to watch. You get to make your own judgement, but do note how the rousing ending, clearly tacked on to appease the film censors, flags its own artificiality about as flagrantly as is possible (while still getting away with it).
Shelly Kraicer