52 Films by Women Vol 4. 22. THE CROSSING (Director: Bai Xue)
Peipei (Huang Yao) the young hero of Chinese director Bai Xue’s
debut film, The Crossing has just turned sixteen. She dreams of travelling
to Japan with her best friend, Jo (Carmen Soup). They look forward to seeing
snow for the first time, sipping sake and sitting in a hot spring. How can they
afford such a trip? Selling mobile phone screen protectors to their classmates
at thirty Hong Kong dollars each (approximately 4 US dollars) raises a small
amount. Even then, there are grumbles about the price. (‘It includes labour,’
adds Jo defiantly.) Peipei takes a part-time job at a restaurant at minimum
wage (32.5 Hong Kong dollars per hour). There is a complaint. At one of the
tables Peipei cleared, a woman has lost a ring. ‘The customer is always right,’
Peipei is informed with barely a trace of irony or sarcasm. At the end of the
night, she is paid in cash. Her father, who lives with his new family, gives
her a couple of hundred Hong Kong dollars. ‘Don’t tell mother,’ he says. He
takes a call. The mortgage is a few million, agency fees seventy thousand. The
matter is not spoken about, but he is not in a position to fund Peipei’s trip.
At least he remembers Peipei’s birthday. Her mother, who is
immersed in a game of Mah Jong, doesn’t even mention it. There are dumplings on
the table, but Peipei goes straight to her room. One of the Mah Jong players
complains about her son, Heydon, being educated in Hong Kong. They speak
Cantonese and English – how is she supposed to help him with his homework? The
woman curses giving birth there.
Peipei lives in Shenzhen, a city in south-eastern China that
links Hong Kong with the Chinese mainland. Although in close proximity to Hong
Kong, the population speak Mandarin. Each day, Peipei takes the train to the
border and crosses it to go to school. When we first see them together, Peipei
and Jo are late – they make excuses that barely pass muster. One morning,
Peipei stuffs some of her mother’s cigarettes into a pencil case and then more
into a flask. She and Jo skip school; Jo impersonates Peipei’s ‘maid’ on the
phone. They attend a yacht party. One of the boys has a birthday. The
cigarettes, poured onto a table, are their gift. Peipei is goaded into sliding
into the water. Only she cannot swim. Hao (Sunny Sun), Jo’s boyfriend, rescues
her. He chides her. By the end of the evening, Jo is drunk. There is no space
in the car for Peipei. She makes her own way back, but not before seeing two
boys with some mobile phones wrapped in plastic. As the boys cross into
mainland China, they are pursued by customs officials. A bag containing four
phones is given to Peipei. In her bedroom, she lays them out in a row, all of
them switched on. They are like over-sized keys on a neon piano, bricks of
light. Peipei takes a call from Hao. ‘How did you get this number?’ she asks.
‘Don’t open the package,’ Hao tells her. She is to bring the phones to an
address.
For her trouble, Peipei is given some money. She meets Hao
again, this time at Jo’s aunt’s house. The family is rich. The aunt lives in
Galway in Ireland. Perusing a globe, Peipei cannot find it. ‘What does she do
there?’ ‘Frying chips,’ explains Jo. If the aunt could buy such a large house
buying chips, it might be something Peipei would consider. At an opportune
moment, Peipei asks Hao if she ‘could do that thing again’.
The title refers not simply to the border crossing that
Peipei makes every day but to her crossing the line into criminality. She also,
at a certain point, crosses her friend, when Jo finds out that Hao has taken a
girl to Kowloon Peak. It could also refer to the railway track where Peipei
drops one of the phones – she only sees it when she is standing on a bridge. It
is also relates to Hao ‘crossing’ his employer, Sister Hua (Kong May Yee Elena)
who runs the phone smuggling operation.
What it doesn’t refer to is Peipei crossing into womanhood.
Although she does go to Kowloon Peak with Hao, where he shouts, ‘I’m the King
of Hong Kong’ – off-screen, she calls him an idiot – she does not let him kiss
her. Their most intimate scene involves Hao wrapping a belt of phones around
Peipei’s waist and then attaching them to her legs. Then Peipei wraps phones
around Hao’s waist, glancing at his tattoo of a shark. Red and yellow light
from traffic shine into the room and pass over their bodies, giving a frisson
of eroticism.
‘Why do you like sharks so much?’ ‘Why do you like snow so
much?’ Both Peipei and Hao act tough. Initially, though Peipei is apprehensive
about knowingly smuggling phones. Before making her first crossing, she drains
a plastic bottle of water dry. She is late for the delivery, and has to call
the man who is taking receipt of the phones. He complains.
Nevertheless, as a montage illustrates, Peipei becomes more
efficient. She even sees Hao in his regular job as a noodle seller. When Hao
hands her a bowl to take to table one, she does so and works as his waitress
for the night. Peipei’s gratitude to Hao is unspoken. However, she does not try
to steal Hao away from Jo. She is disturbed by Jo’s anger: ‘I was doing this
for our trip,’ she says. Jo tears up the plane tickets to Japan – or at least
screws them up – and calls Peipei’s mother a whore. This time, it is Peipei who
is overwhelmed with fury.
Sister Hua’s smuggling den becomes a second home for Peipei.
The older woman feeds her – there is chatter about egg (in egg fried rice)
being over-cooked. At one point, a gun is pointed at her, though it appears to
be a replica. It needs to be smuggled over the border. Peipei almost volunteers
but Hao warns her of the consequences.
At three moments in the film, Bai inserts a freeze frame set
to some bass guitar. These are the ‘crossing’ points, when Peipei transgresses
or becomes aware of something dangerous. For example, outside of Hua’s den, she
sees a man who has been beaten up. The criminality in which she takes part
appears victimless. It is clear that violence is not far away.
The most striking scene involves Peipei trying to get a
phone repaired before its delivery, having dropped it. In Shenzhen, a large
crowd amasses around her. They want to buy the phone. A repair will cost 1,500.
Why so much? It is the latest model. She receives various offers, but she is
saved by Hao who takes it to another repairer. Peipei offers him money, but it
is given back to her. Hao is cutting a deal on the side.
There are moments of melancholy, when Peipei stands outside
a restaurant where her father is eating. She also defends her mother from a man
who owes her money; the man won’t hit a schoolgirl. Peipei proves herself to
have agency, even though she cannot solve every problem. During the big finish,
she is caught in a rainstorm.
The film offers some (Chinese) state-approved criticism of
Hong Kong’s ‘one land, two systems’ government that allows criminality to
exist. The Chinese are portrayed as broadly honourable. During one of her
deliveries, Peipei asks for water, even though her contact has misheard her.
Nevertheless, he brings sliced mango.
In the postscript, Peipei takes her mother to Kowloon Peak.
The unspoken danger is that Peipei would become just like her. Her mother
dreams of going to Spain; Peipei remarks that Mother does not know where it is.
(‘It is in south-eastern hemisphere’, Mother retorts). Peipei’s birthday wish
was that it would snow. At the end of the film, she holds out her palm, and a
flake falls gently into it.
Reviewed at Cineworld,
West India Quay, Screen Six, East London, Saturday 23 March 2019, 20:00
screening
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