New Serie
Just before the pandemic, Wong Kar-wai had John Powers read the scripts for the first four episodes of a television series called Fan Hua. “Since we wrote a book together in 2015, we have spoken regularly,” says Mr. Powers, a film critic at Vogue and on American public radio, in a telephone interview. “I was surprised by this television project, then I remembered that he had done some at the beginning of his career in Hong Kong. I was even more surprised to find that there was a clear plot. He is often criticized for favoring the visual aspect rather than the plot. »
The series follows three men from different backgrounds in Shanghai who suffer from the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. They then participate in Chinese economic liberalization, which culminates with the transformation of Shanghai into the Wall Street of the Middle Kingdom, with all the excesses that are associated with stock market wealth.
For the moment, the English name of the series is Blossoms Shanghai.
Hundreds of millions of people have seen the series. I was at a restaurant in Los Angeles recently and overheard two Chinese people talking about it as the best show they had ever seen.
John Powers, film critic at Vogue and on American public radio
Mr. Powers heard from Wong Kar-wai again at the end of January. “We haven’t seen each other since the pandemic started, but he told me he would come to the United States in February. He’s going to show me a subtitled version of the series. »
PHOTO ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A woman poses in front of posters advertising the television series Blossoms Shanghai in Shanghai, China.
Adaptation
Fan Hua is the adaptation of a novel by Jin Yucheng, published in 2012 and written in Shanghai dialect. In Chinese media, Mr. Jin reported that Wong Kar-wai told him that his brother and sister had had very similar experiences. This is why he wanted to adapt it.
“Wong Kar-wai left Shanghai at age 5 with his parents in the early 1960s,” explains Mr. Powers. When the Cultural Revolution hit China, his big brother and sister were stuck in China. He has always been nostalgic for his childhood in Shanghai. »
The series is offered in China in its original Shanghai dialect version, but was dubbed for national broadcast, according to Micky Lee, a professor at Suffolk University in Boston, because the communist government wants to unify the country through Mandarin. The Shanghai dialect has now practically disappeared, according to Mme Lee.
PHOTO ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Fans of the series Blossoms Shanghai visit the Peace Hotel, a historic building that frequently features in the Chinese series.
Multiple reissues
Wong Kar-wai plans to make a version of Fan Hua in film, which could be presented at Cannes next May. He also mentioned a reissue of the series. “He proposed editing the series based on feedback from Chinese viewers,” says Micky Lee, who published a collection of the filmmaker’s media interviews in 2018. “He was always known as an editing freak, his films were arriving for screening at the last minute in Hong Kong. And there is the famous story of 2046 in Cannes in 2004.”
The gala evening where 2046 was to be presented had to be postponed due to last minute changes made by its director. Journalists then joked that the title of the film referred to its year of release.
So is it realistic that a new Wong Kar-wai will be presented at Cannes this year? John Powers chuckles when asked. “He has until March to register, that’s all we can say at the moment. »
Thelma Cot-Ogryzek, press officer at the Cannes Film Festival, responds that “the official selection will not be announced until mid-April during the annual press conference”.
“Wong Kar-wai is never satisfied with one version of his films,” recalls Gary Bettinson, a professor of cinema at the University of Lancaster, in England, who in 2014 published a book analyzing the films of Wong Kar-wai. “There are several versions of his films. He even recently announced that he would make available all the footage fromAshes of Time (1994), so fans can make their own movie. We call this vidding. »
The Taiwan Bear
At a time of repression in Hong Kong, is it surprising that Wong Kar-wai is making his career in communist China? “He hasn’t been a Hong Kong filmmaker for a long time,” says Mr. Bettinson. His latest film, Grandmaster (2013), was also financed by capital from mainland China. »
The only time Wong Kar-wai made a political gesture was when he rushed to release his film Happy Together before the handover of Hong Kong in July 1997, according to Micky Lee. “He suspected that the homosexual subject would be more difficult under the communist regime. » Happy Together won the Best Director Award at Cannes in 1997.
Grandmaster won the Golden Horse award for best film at the 2013 Taiwan Film Festival. Since then, the Chinese government has banned its filmmakers from participating. Will Wong Kar-wai submit his next film for a Golden Horse? “I’m sure not,” said Mr. Powers. He never talked to me about politics. For me, it is clear that faced with the choice of continuing to have a lot of financing in China for his films and a trophy in Taiwan, he will choose China. »
Watch the trailer for Fan Hua (with English subtitles)