‘Old Town Girls’: A melancholy neo-noir set in southern China’s rust belt

After its U.S. premiere at the New York Asian Film Festival last year, Old Town Girls (兔子暴力 tùzǐ bàolì) has finally become available to North American audiences via video-on-demand. This debut by Shēn Yú 申瑜, a Beijing Film Academy MFA graduate, is essentially a film of two halves. The first part is a melancholy drama of high school girls and their various problems, while the second half transforms into a crime thriller.

The film starts with the end of the narrative: the two girls have been kidnapped, and their distressed parents meet in the middle of the night to discuss what to do. Rather than paying a hefty ransom to the kidnappers, they go to the police. However, the situation gets complicated when the parents’ car trunk is opened outside the police station. The plot was inspired by a real 2011 criminal case.

This neo-noir coming-of-age thriller is set not in an urban metropolis like Shanghai, the director’s hometown, but in Panzhihua, a small industrial city in southern Sichuan Province that once held big expectations of becoming China’s steel capital. In this rust belt locale, high school senior Shui Qing (Lǐ Gēngxī 李庚希) lives with an indifferent father and stepmother. Two of her classmates have their own family problems. Jin Xi (Chái Yè 柴烨) comes from a wealthy family and secretly self-harms while her parents work out of town. The good-looking Ma Yueyue (Zhōu Ziyuè 周子越) is caught in a tense situation between her father, an abusive factory worker, and his well-off boss who wants to adopt her.

Her two friends enjoy better prospects than her, but Shui Qing longs for one thing only: to reunite with her mother, Qu Ting (Wàn Qiàn 万茜), who left the family to become a dancer in a big city. This dream suddenly seems possible when Qu rolls into town exuding elegance – except for her foreboding, bandaged little finger. The strained bond between mother and daughter starts to recover, and all is well until Qu’s murky past catches up with her in the form of Mr. Du (Huáng Jué 黄觉).

Shen Yu’s decision to show the conclusion of the plot first draws audiences into the story, but it also detracts from the latter half of the narrative, which could have teemed with gripping, uneasy tension.

Aside from a plot pulled straight from the newspapers, there is a more poignant subtext to the script: how dysfunctional families survive in decaying industrial cities. In this respect, Old Town Girls is as much a story about neglected and left-behind children longing for escape as it is about their defeated parents.

Yueyue’s father (Pān Bīnlóng 潘斌龙) juggles caring for his daughter and making a living, and is frustrated at his incompetence to provide what is best for her. Qu Ting comes off as an independent woman who has made her way in the world but is, in fact, far from one. “Someone pushed me into the swing in the chaos,” she bitterly says, recounting her first time on the stage and perhaps also her initiation into life outside the small city.

One of the best aspects of the film is the cast’s performance. With more than a dozen credits under her belt, Li Gengxi – one of Chinese television’s go-to actresses for the high school girl role – skillfully captures the desperation of Shui Qing. Director Shen revealed that many scenes were improvised during shooting. “The actors performed like playing ping-pong, giving unscripted reactions to each other,” she says in the press kit. The result is even more impressive, especially since Chai Ye and Zhou Ziyue are both first-time actresses.

As a cinematic term, neo-noir is often misused or overused due to its amorphic nature.

As a cinematic term, neo-noir is often misused or overused due to its amorphic nature. But Old Town Girls fits quite well. There’s Qu as a femme fatale, albeit one with enchanting powers not over men but her daughter. Her yellow car and clothes symbolize energy but also danger, right from the start. Cinematographer Wāng Shìqīng 汪士卿 plays with light and shadow in the night scenes, and employs oblique angles and out-of-focus shots to convey the uneasy, unsettled atmosphere. The combination of his disorienting camerawork and the industrial scenery gives a grounding sense of place to a somber story.

“It is a tragic story, but I hope the film brings viewers consolation,” says Shen Yu. “Because it’s also about love.” A mixture of coming-of-age drama and crime thriller, Old Town Girls is a promising debut from a filmmaker with potential.

Old Town Girls will be available on VOD in the U.S. and Canada from December 23.