Mad Bills to Pay: Qu Stages Miserabilist Soap Opera
If Girls on Wire settles on anything clear to say it’s quite simply that crime doesn’t pay, at least judging from the seemingly endless intergenerational ripple effects inspired by criminal activity allowed to fester through an aimless sense of gratitude. It’s quite a significant disappointment coming from Vivian Qu, whose exceptional sophomore film Angels Wear White and simmering 2013 debut Trap Street cemented her as one of the most exciting contemporary Chinese directors of the past decade (and that’s not to mention her producer credits, which include Diao Yi’nan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice, 2014). Her latest clearly benefits from a more sizable budget but can’t shake a nagging sense of preachy propaganda as we witness two young women ensnared in their family’s inextricable indebtedness to a cruel cartel. Stock piled with endless trauma, drama, and redemption, all is eventually for nought in this hokey melodrama which gleefully doles out sordidness but never any real sense of tension.
Qu’s opening moment is an attention grabber as we meet Tian Tian (Liu Haocun) clawing her way out of a drug induced stupor and murdering her captor, appearing to have been abducted against her will for sex trafficking or as a drug mule. She manages to make her way to a bustling film production studio called Film City, where her cousin Fang Di (Wen Qi) works as a stunt woman, whose integral profession is generally disregarded based on the treatment she’s receiving on her latest production. The two women haven’t spoken for five years, apparently over Fang Di’s irritation over Tian Tian giving birth as a single mother to daughter Lulu. It appears Fang Di has inherited considerable family debt owed to a cartel run by a ruthless, and mostly unobserved woman named Madame Yang, who has sent three goons to fetch Fang Di’s late payment and also nab Tian Tian.
Generous flashbacks of a tawdry childhood experienced by the cousins reveals the troubled history which leads them to the present. Fang Di’s mother (Peng Jing) once owned a flourishing clothing production business, but was financially drained by her brother (Zhou You), a drug addict turned peddler whom she is indebted to for saving her from sexual assault years prior. His parasitic habits lead Tian Tian to snitch on him to the police. Ere goes, she must pay what he owes to the cartel, which means everything falls on Fang Di’s shoulders.
The opening sequence eventually feels as if it belongs in an entirely different film as Qu eventually depends on chummy schmaltziness as the two women reunite and then attempt to avoid Madame Yang’s henchmen (who are utilized for broad comedic humor, which ends up feeling mildly inappropriate considering the dramatic stakes). Initial interest is established when a majority of the first act in modern day takes place within the confines of the bustling film studio, where Fang Di’s real dreams to become an actress seem futile. But the frequent returns to exaggerated abuses of the past, where exposition flows as if from a gaping bullet wound, are egregiously hacky and bloat the pacing. Girls on Wire might directly reference Fang Di’s occupation, but as a film it never nears the suspense or precision of balancing on a tightrope.
Reviewed on February 18th at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival (75th edition) – Main Competition. 115 Mins.
★★/☆☆☆☆☆
