Mongolian Ping Pong (Screen Daily review)

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Mongolian Ping Pong (Screen Daily review)

Postby dleedlee » Mon Mar 07, 2005 5:32 pm

Mongolian Ping Pong (Lu Caodi)

07 March 2005



Dir: Ning Hao. China. 2005. 102mins.

A worthwhile addition to the yurt-flick genre that has included the likes of Urga, Mongolian Ping Pong is one of those ethnic features that allows audiences to get inside an alien landscape and culture from the comfort of their own cinema seat. Beautifully-shot, the film is a paean to the endless Mongolian steppes and the nomadic way of life they foster.

But Mongolian Ping Pong is also infused by the pace of life around these parts – in other words, it’s painfully slow. Still, the harshness of the landscape and the lagging tempo are balanced by touches of sly humour and the cuteness of the three child actors who carry the plot, and the ping pong ball.

Slight but graceful, it joins the recent trend for Central Asian films, like Mountain Patrol or The Cup, whose appeal for “western” audiences lies at least partly in the armchair travel line. Patient ethno-chic arthouse audiences in Western Europe look to be the best bet for this Berlinale Forum selection, followed perhaps by early-morning slots on specialist cable and satellite channels.

A delicious opening tableau has the family of little Bilgee (Hurzbileg) posing in front of what looks like the Imperial Palace in Beijing – but which turns out to be a cloth backdrop used by an itinerant photographer. They then pose for another snap in front of “USA scenery” – which turns out to be the Arc de Triomphe. It’s a funny intro, but also a neat way of establishing the extreme cultural and geographic isolation of life on the steppes.

The modern world comes through filtered and distorted, like the picture on the TV set that Bilgee’s shepherd father (Yadamnarbuu) is constantly fiddling with. Life centres on certain familiar objects – horses, sheep, the yurt the family sleep in, the ancient grandmother’s wool spindle, the four-wheel-drive trucks that carry people and merchandise (including a well-thumbed back copy of Chinese Elle) in and out of this vast but fragile rural universe.

When Bilgee and his two young friends (Geliban and Dawaa) find a ping-pong ball in a creek, they have no idea what it is, and nobody they ask seems to have much of a clue either. Hearing a TV sports commentator remark that the ping pong ball is “the ball of the nation”, the three friends set out to return the ball to Beijing – which they reckon they can reach before nightfall, on horseback.

Director Ning Hao’s previous outing, Incense, was a blackly comic moral tale about the money lust of New China, which picked up the Grand Prix at the 2003 Tokyo FILMeX festival. Mongolian Ping Pong has less satirical bite, its parable about how the land of Genghis Khan became a picturesque footnote to Chinese history rather diluted by the film’s meandering storyline and its preference for ethnological observation over narrative development.

When it drags, indulgent viewers will turn for sustenance to the lovingly composed photography, its wide angles playing up the great expanse of grassland and sky, and the haunting soundtrack which makes ample use of nose flute.

Prod cos: Kunlun Brother Film & TV Productions Ltd, Beijing HOP Culture Co Ltd
Int’l sales: Bavaria Film International
Exec prods: Lan Ruilong, Ning Hao
Prods: Lu Bin, He Bu
Scr: Ning Hao, Xing Aina, Gao Jianguos
Cine: Du Jie
Ed: Jiang Yong
Prod des: Zhang Xiaobing, Yang Min
Mus: Lu Jiajia, Wu He
Main cast: Hurichabilike, Dawa, Geliban, Yadamnarbuu
???? Better to light a candle than curse the darkness; Measure twice, cut once.
Pinyin to Wade-Giles. Cantonese names file
dleedlee
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