Chinese high school student Song Hao (Zhou Zhengjie) is polite, conscientious, and a bit of a nerd. When we first see him, he’s intently playing video games in an arcade, only to be targeted by a bully for no obvious reason other than perhaps he looks like an easy victim. Then he’s saved by his classmate and best friend Li Tang (Lee Hong-Chi), who makes the bully back down just by saying Hao is with him. And why does Tang’s word carry such weight? Because his father, Li Weiguo (Jin Hui), is the local mayor, and in the small (fictional) coastal town where the story takes place, such things are of primary importance.
At the start of Back to the Wharf, Hao is looking forward to a bright future. His grades are so good that he’s earned a place in university without having to qualify through the gaokao, China’s grueling national college entrance exam. But just as being the mayor’s son gives Tang automatic street cred with the local bullies, so it also buys him preference with the educational establishment. When Hao visits his high school principal, he’s shocked to learn that his automatic place has gone to someone “who needs it more” because Hao will undoubtedly get a place through the gaokao. The person who got Hao’s spot, it turns out, is none other than his buddy Tang.
Hao is disappointed, but his father Song Jianhui (Wang Yanhui), a minor local official, is livid. Education is a big deal in China and Jianhui is very invested in Hao’s academic success. So Jianhui heads off to have it out with the mayor, and Hao follows on his bike, hoping to limit the damage. Things go from bad to worse when Hao enters the wrong house by mistake, is attacked by a drunken resident, and severely injures the man while trying to escape. When Jianhui catches up, he finishes the man off so he can’t testify in court, and Hao has to get out of town in a hurry, his hopes of a university education and a professional career gone forever.
That’s a film noir setup if ever there was one—an essentially good person, victimized by outside forces, puts a foot wrong once and the course of their life is irrevocably altered for the worse. The first 30 minutes or so of Li Xiaofeng’s Back to the Wharf are gripping cinema, beautifully shot by Piao Songri, and achieve a nearly mythological sense of inevitability. The rest of the film is just as beautiful to look at, but less successful overall, due to an overly complicated plot line that depends so much on coincidence as to test the viewer’s patience without achieving anything like the heightened sensibility of the first third.
Jumping forward 15 years, Hao, working in construction, gets a call that his mother has died. Returning home, he learns that his pal Tang is now a flashy real estate developer (he wears a purple suit, I kid you not), his parents were separated, and his father intends to emigrate to Australia with his new wife and son. Hao is racked with guilt for his role in the murder, but Dad not so much—in fact he’s mentally erased his own role in the murder and has tossed Hao over the side as if he were some kind of malfunctioning machine to be replaced by a new and improved model—which would be the son from the second wife.
Hao takes up with a former classmate, Pan Xiaoshuang (Song Jia), finds a job, and it looks like things might finally start going his way. Or so you might believe if you don’t know anything about noir, because fate is definitely not yet done with Hao. Ultimately, I think Back to the Wharf is making a statement about corruption in modern China and how it magnifies the privileges of the haves while destroying the dreams of the have-nots. That makes it a film of particular relevance to Americans as well—we like to think that we’re a meritocracy, but the evidence keeps piling up that hereditary privilege is an important factor in everything from college admission to job interviews to promotion and advancement. And viewing this film as more of an allegory than a piece of social realism makes it easier to overlook some of the more inept occasions of plotting we’re asked to accept . | Sarah Boslaugh
Back to the Wharf will be available on VOD (including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, iNDemand, and DISH) beginning Jan. 17.
