Cell Phone
(Feng Xiaogang 2003)
Cell Phone
(Feng Xiaogang 2003)
Story:
Popular TV host Yan Shouyi (Ge You) has it all: a great job, a loyal wife and a gorgeous young lover. He depends on his cell phone to keep his world organized. His life starts unraveling when he forgets his cell phone at home and his wife answers a call from his lover.
Review:
Mixing the emotional depth of his marital drama "Sigh"
(2000) with the insouciant satire of contempo Chinese consumerism in "Big
Shot's Funeral" (2002), helmer Feng Xiaogang comes up with his subtlest
comedy to date in "Cell Phone." Released last December, film rang
up the biggest numbers so far for the Sino hitmeister (north of $6 million),
yet surprisingly still awaits platforming by a major Western fest. With a confident
offshore push by Columbia TriStar, this entertainingly ironic yarn about a serial
philanderer tripped up by modern mobile technology could help to break down
occidental resistance to accessible movies from mainland China.
A new film and a new novel under the same title, Cell phone (Shouji) have hit the box office and the book market at the same time. The special marketing seems to have won a lot more public attention than anyone would have managed. The ploy was the brainchild of Feng Xiaogang, one of China's most popular film directors. Feng developed the film script with Liu Zhenyun and later asked Liu to expand the script into a novel.
Born
in the late 1950s, Feng Xiaogang is a native of Beijing and the son of a Communist
Party college professor and a factory nurse. Feng learned his craft not through
film school (like many of the Chinese filmmakers).