The next installment in my Zhang Yimou retrospective requires actually going back in time to fill in a gap in the series. Better late than never…
Earlier in my tour through Zhang Yimou’s movies, I had to skip Keep Cool (1997), because I could not then find a copy. I have since been able watch the movie, though, and I would judge it a unique, quirky, but not entirely successful entry in Zhang’s work.
Written by Shu Ping, Keep Cool follows Zhao (Jiang Wen), a brawny, rather dim fellow who sells books from a street kiosk but has little interest in reading any of them. Zhao is more interested in winning back the affections of his ex-girlfriend An Hong (Qu Ying), who dumps him as the movie opens. As Zhao goes about this quest, “keeping cool” is the one thing he cannot do, either physically, amid the heat of an urban summer, or emotionally.
Essentially a comedy, although one with a definite dark side, Keep Cool shows Zhao going through a convoluted series of mishaps and awkward or dangerous situations triggered by his pursuit of An Hong.
First, he tries to get her attention by calling out to her, and even reading her a poem, from the courtyard outside her apartment building. As Zhao has a stammer, though, he does not feel confident doing this by himself and so hires other street vendors and deliverymen to do it for him. This attempt at a love declaration by proxy repeatedly goes awry, though.
Zhao’s pestering of An Hong soon incurs the wrath of her new boyfriend Liu Delong (Liu Xinyi), a nightclub owner and two-bit crook. Liu and his associates beat up Zhao. In the melee Zhao ends up destroying the laptop of Zhang Lao (Li Baotian). Zhang wants compensation for his ruined computer; Zhao insists Liu Delong is to blame.
Soon the two men are uneasy companions in their respective quests: Zhang to replace his laptop and Zhao to get revenge on Liu and perhaps get back An Hong as well. Needless to say, things do not go according to plan.
To tell this odd, farcical story Zhang and cinematographer Lu Yue adopt a style wholly different from any other Zhang movie I have seen. In contrast to both the glossy flamboyance of his wuxia movies and the understated, quasi-documentary approach of his more naturalistic features, Zhang has made Keep Cool with what I can describe only as a self-conscious raggedness.
The movie is filmed mainly with a hand-held camera, so the shots shake and bounce. Off-kilter angles and extreme close-ups are present in abundance, as are long takes as the camera follows the characters through warren-like streets, alleys, and hallways. These techniques, combined with editor Du Yuan’s frequent use of jump cuts, make the movie feel frenetic and patched together.
The grainy imagery, with its bleached-out colors, both underlines this rough quality and makes everything seem baked by the summer heat. Meanwhile, the frequent use of pop songs on the soundtrack keeps the energy level up.
Comedy is among the most subjective of art forms, so how viewers react to Keep Cool’s particular brand of absurdity and the comedy of embarrassment is going to vary. For my part, I found some of the situations amusing, at least for the first half of the movie.
One scene, involving a street vendor garbling Zhao’s message to An Hong, made me laugh out loud. I also liked a moment where a character tests out a megaphone by yelling through it “The police are here!”; at which point, everyone around him makes a run for it.
The introduction of Zhang is handled well. We first see him, in close-up, anxiously inquiring about the health and well-being of the beaten, bloodied Zhao. Once he has determined that Zhao is in no immediate danger, he sits down and, business-like, begins negotiations about replacing his computer. (However, the subsequent “Who’s-on-First”-like argument between the two men about how Zhang’s computer was ruined fell flat for me.)
Keep Cool’s unpolished, jangly style probably helps the comedy work better than it might otherwise. In a more conventionally filmed comedy, where the jokes were carefully underlined by editing and music, many of the gags might just come across as labored. Here, the filmmakers just seem to be haphazardly catching the characters as they stumble through the various plot complications, which gives everything a loose, improvisational feel.
For one episode, though, the film’s style shifts in a way that heightens the comedy. Zhao persuades An Hong, who is in a more favorable mood, to go on a date with him. Afterwards, back at his apartment, Zhao begins an attempted seduction, complete with candles and glasses of cognac. The scene unfolds with all the familiar film techniques for a love scene: romantic music, slow motion, dissolves.
Then, Zhang starts banging on the apartment door, wanting to discuss the computer situation. The film promptly switches back to its usual rough style as Zhao tries to get rid of Zhang and recapture the mood. He repeats the business with the candles but to no avail this time, perhaps because he is no longer getting help from the filmmakers.
The filmmakers’ approach also takes the edge off some of the nastier moments. Zhao’s beating by Liu Delong and his men takes place on a city street and is filmed in long shots from the other side of the road. The violence is thus only half-glimpsed, through a blur of passing cars.
Keep Cool works reasonably well for about half its short, 90-odd-minute run-time. The movie bogs down, though, in its second half, most of which is taken up by an extended sequence set in a restaurant. During the restaurant sequence, Zhao plots a violent revenge on Liu Delong and Zhang tries to talk him out of it. The situation escalates as Zhang resorts to more and more desperate means to avert the violence and Zhao doggedly tries to fulfill his plan.
All this is presumably meant to give the movie a big, grotesque comic climax, but I found it rather interminable and ultimately grating (the artless style probably works against the movie in this sequence). Still, I appreciated the sequence’s tense final moments, which include a deus ex machina-style resolution that seemed apt.
The actors generally do a good job with the ridiculous material, Jiang Wen and Li Baotian giving energetic performances while Qu Ying and Liu Xinyi are more laid-back. Li especially impressed me in light of his other roles in Zhang movies: his performance as the comically fretful Zhao seems so easy and unforced that it is striking to remember the very different characters he played in Ju Dou and Shanghai Triad.
One final thought: I half-seriously wonder if Keep Cool was intended by Zhang as a pastiche/parody of American independent films. The movie’s combination of an obviously low budget, film school-aesthetics, pounding pop score, plot that mixes romantic comedy with crime drama, and 1990s release date all make it feel like it could have fit in neatly at the Sundance festival.
Keep Cool even has the rather indie movie touch of a director’s cameo. One street vendor Zhao persuades to call out to An Hong on his behalf is played by none other than Zhang Yimou! Perhaps it is not so surprising that this scene is the funniest in the movie; Zhang clearly knows a good bit when he sees it.
The Cameraman 