We all have our YouTube rabbit holes. One of mine is watching clips of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert’s various film review programs from throughout their storied career (yes, I’m aware that I’m a cliché of a film nerd). One phrase they often used to describe films which missed the mark was “it’s all behavior and mood.” While of course you need to have both of those things in order to have a movie, you need a great deal more than that to have a good one. Green Night is the perfect example of a movie with this kind of problem. It operates as though its tragic plot elements can stand in for genuine emotion, and it moves through its sad, meandering tale as if any slight change in its lead characters’ situations is empowering, regardless of what is done to arrive at said change. Although it has a strong performance by Fan Bingbing at its center, its story never amounts to much more than behavior and mood.
However annoyed I am with the film in general, I can only be but so perturbed with co-writer and director Han Shuai. This is just her second feature film, and there are moments (especially as led by Fan) where the false veneer of grit drops to reveal something strikingly human. Unfortunately, this feminist vision of a Korean crime spree doesn’t have the overall progressive bent it thinks it does. One particularly egregious unforced error involves loner Jin Xia (Fan) and the green-haired girl she befriends (Lee Joo-young, the character is actually listed in the credits as “Green-haired Girl”) stealing a door key from a passed-out trans woman, and then making fun of her for having the audacity to have women’s clothing hanging in her own home. I’m not sure if something got lost in translation here, but in any event, it’s most offensive because it’s totally unnecessary. It’s never a piece of behavior to be critiqued, but rather just another escapade to get the unlikely duo to the next plot point when there were a variety of other ways they could have done so.
Regardless of the filmmakers’ intent there, Green Night has far more issues than just that scene. When Xia and the green-haired girl first meet at Xia’s airport security job, the quasi-romantic spark we’re meant to feel between them comes off as totally empty because we haven’t really been introduced to either of them at that point. We can tell Xia is unhappy, but the film then has to work overtime to show us why she’s unhappy and introduce us to the drug-running life of the green-haired girl at the same time. Some moments of their early connection are amusing, but just in those first few scenes alone, the film is flailing about to fill in the backstory instead of giving us genuine dramatic tension to go along with the stakes it’s delivering verbally. Xia is being electronically harangued by her estranged husband, and after the green-haired girl gets too high on her own supply, Xia… takes her to her husband’s apartment?! Given what we see after they arrive, we’re left wondering why she would ever think that was a safe place. When the behavior of our characters doesn’t make sense, it’s purely behavior rather than motivated, clear action. Even in the most dire circumstances, it’s hard to root for characters who don’t seem to have their own best interests in mind.
I like the film’s emphasis on its theme of female empowerment. But a theme is not a story. When you hang a plot full of nonsensical behavior on just one theme, you’re simply left with only mood. Perhaps that can carry some viewers for ninety minutes, but to my mind, that’s not good storytelling. I’m not saying you have to agree with Siskel and Ebert on every movie opinion they ever had, — Lord knows I don’t — but they had a way of crafting succinct phrases which perfectly describe all kinds of issues films can have, and I couldn’t help but find their words prophetic while watching Green Night. | George Napper
In Chinese and Korean with English subtitles
