Logline
On New Year's Eve, three families in a courtyard house in a southern mountain village argue over what to do with a thief's body: an absurd comedy.
A Thief Is Dead
Creative Statement
The courtyard house at the centre of the film is like a miniature society. In an enclosed space it shows a tangle of relationships of power: between father and son, between lovers, between neighbours, between officials and businessmen. Because of the thief's accidental death, one household's side gate must be chosen to carry the body out, and this pulls on the relationships among the families in the courtyard. Their grudges, loves and hatreds shift as each household's side gate opens and closes, and the traditional clan ties of the village gradually fall apart before the profit-first relationships of modern society. The director grew up in a mountain village and knows its people, details and customs well, which is a sound basis for a film set in one concentrated space with complex relationships between characters.
Synopsis
On New Year's Eve, a thief falls to his death in a courtyard house in a small mountain village in Hunan. Four households share the courtyard. Third Uncle, on the north side, is a firm believer in feng shui: he holds that carrying someone who died a violent death out through the main gate will bring bad luck, and the body must go out through one of the side gates to avert disaster. The courtyard has three side gates. The woman on the south side has long been Third Uncle's secret lover, and he favours her. The neighbour on the east side dug coal for years in the mine owned by Third Uncle's son and caught pneumoconiosis; the two families fell out over compensation, and when Third Uncle goes to negotiate, the door is shut in his face. The west side is the long-collapsed ancestral house of the deputy mayor's family, and after weighing it all, Third Uncle decides it is the only way out for the body. But his son, a businessman, insists that such an important neighbour must not be offended. Moving the body reaches a deadlock: feng shui and personal ties cannot both be satisfied. Xiao Jianzhong, who has done business away from home for years and believes money solves everything, offers a reward of 100,000 yuan to whoever can break the deadlock. The villagers' nerves are set on edge and they join the scramble for the "bounty", leading to a farce of stealing bodies, hiding bodies, pretending to be the body and even fighting over the body. The corpse everyone wanted rid of becomes the prize everyone fights for. From three families refusing to open their side gates, it comes to every family competing to open theirs. In the struggle over the body, the affair between Third Uncle and Qiaohong is exposed, the real body mysteriously disappears, and Third Uncle finds himself losing control of everything...
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Genre:
Absurdist Comedy -
Director/Screenwriter:
Chen Mingwang
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Producer:
Liang Wenxin