The High Life opens with a raw contrast of poetics and imprisonment that can be glimpsed throughout the film, as a female inmate in a bleak correction facility reads aloud the verses of Officer Dian Qiu to a table of inmates folding cellophane flowers as part of their forced labor. In each of the stories that follow, the search for redeeming beauty and richness in the midst of social, cultural and political desolation motivates the lives of the film’s characters.
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Jian Ming, a small-time criminal, lives in a crowded urban village slum in Guangzhou. With no goals or aspirations, he scrapes out an existence by running a phony employment agency, scamming money out of desperate new arrivals from the countryside. He derives petty fulfillment through the creation on his apartment wall of a collage comprising the photos of his scam victims. His only other escape from his rock-bottom life in the urban village is his daily Chinese opera routine, which he performs on the rooftop of his apartment building.
Jian Ming also secretly passes time with Ah Fang, a young mistress kept by a wealthier patron in an apartment in the urban village. But the arrival one day of a fresh-faced young migrant named Xiao Ya jostles Jian Ming out of his malaise. Xiao Ya has come to the city in search of work, and for the first time ever Jian Ming seriously considers how he might give her a real leg up. He introduces her to a sleazy hair salon in the village, taking an under-the-table finders fee from the salon’s owner. This business exchange weighs on Jian Ming’s conscience, and he often goes to the salon to speak with Xiao Ya. The two grow closer and closer.
Before long, the mistress Ah Fang grows to despise her elderly patron. She presses Jian Ming to leave the village with her and start a new life. But tensions grow between them, as Jian Ming must face the fact that he has perhaps never truly loved Ah Fang. Meanwhile, Jian Ming continues to visit Xiao Ya at the salon, where their friendship deepens.
One day, as Jian Ming and Xiao Ya are hanging out, Brother Hui, the local gang leader, comes into the salon for a massage. Jian Ming stands powerless outside as Brother Hui rapes Xiao Ya in the back room. Jian Ming leaves the salon in a fury and later attacks Brother Hui in one of the village’s dark alleys. Brother Hui’s attack on Xiao Ya sends Jian Ming into a deep funk, and his friend, Ren, finally convinces him he has to leap into the future by taking part in a local pyramid sales scheme. Unfortunately, Guangzhou police raid Jian Ming’s first meeting and take him into custody as a suspected perpetrator.
The film then turns to Officer Dian Qiu, a police prison guard who is an aspiring writer of “trash poetry”.
Dian Qiu’s greatest joy is hearing others read his poetry, and each day he foists his notebook on prisoners and forces them to recite the poems for the others. Those who refuse to read Officer Dian’s poetry are placed in solitary confinement.
DIRECTORS STATEMENT:
Upholding one’s own creative ideas and perspective in making films is no easy matter. In the deeply troubled society in which I live, seeking and constructing my own individual sense of identity and dignity has for me become life’s chief struggle. In Chinese society, the pursuit of pleasure has been elevated to the sublime. And yet, in our cities, culture and faith have become desolate. I believe that drama alone gives us a vehicle by which we can regain some semblance of our own humanity.
CAST:
Directed by ZHAO DAYONG
Produced by DAVID BANDURSKI and ZHAO DAYONG
Assistant director LI QING
Screenplay by ZHAO DAYONG
Sound editor WEI CHUNYI
Cinematography by XUE GANG
Production design by WANG JIAN
Edited by ZHAO DAYONG and WEI CHUNYI
Set engineering by ZHAO GUANGJUN and REN JIANDONG
Starring:
QIU HONG
LIU YANFEI
SHEN SHAOQIU
SU QINGYI
DIAO LEI
