Presented by Nezha Bros. Pictures, Modern Sky Entertainment, Berlinale.
Liu Jian brings his distinctive drawing style to a chatty, sketchy autobiographical drama about an art student in millennia-old urban China.
The opening words of Chinese director Liu Jian’s new hairy but affable animated film are instructive. “To live, to make mistakes, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life from life” is a line from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and indeed Liu I went to art college when I was younger. Unsurprisingly, it’s his early ’90s dude who set the stage for ‘Art College 1994’. The cinematic quasi-memoiric feel has its appeal — it’s always a kick to see animation techniques applied to snippets of real, everyday life rather than extravagant flights of fantasy — but it’s the main Liu is very successful at recreating life from life. Whether or not he dramatizes it is another matter. Like its characters, Art College 1994 feels like it’s taking too long.
Liu’s drawing style is full of small pleasures. Particularly intricate backgrounds are where detail resides, like his final Berlin title, Have a Nice Day. The characters are less defined against walls of peeling paint and alleys littered with bicycles. These figures include Chinese celebrities such as Zhou Dongyu (Better Days) breakthrough, Dong Zijian (Mountains May Depart), viral folk-rock sensation Ren Ke, internet comedian Papi Jiang, and respected director Jia. The fact that it’s being voiced by Zhangke and Bi Gan is impressive, but it’s also not something many outside of China will recognize, until the closing credits surprise.
The lack of a single point of view is a bit frustrating. It’s a narrative that prioritizes the first point of view, then another group of loosely coupled groups. But it initially revolves around his friends and collaborators, his Xiaojun (Dong Zijian) and his Rabbit (Chizi). Two students are working on what they declare to be such a masterpiece that, when the film begins, Rabbit wins a major award. Then follows a brief discussion of whether to accept or reject such awards, culminating in the very booming Chinese conclusion that they should “ruin the awards and take the money.” But before they can put this pragmatic principle into action, Lin Weiguo (Bai Ke) — the blonde, blue-eyed American girlfriend and rival student who boasts the ultimate status symbol — rips through the canvas. The tit-for-tat cycle of retaliation for this act gives the film one of its occasional plethora of subplots.
The guys often hang out with Zhao Youcai (Huang Bo), a part-time hairdresser and full-time art philosopher. Fellow students, nicknamed primarily for their weight (Skinny Horse, Chubster, etc.), may join the threesome’s circular conversation. You talk big about art, you get revelation after revelation about its purpose, but you never actually make anything.
As well-rounded individuals, despite less screen time, the two women in the male orbit get along a little better. She has a hesitant and unrequited crush on Xiaojun, but it is also her pragmatic approach to her future that attracts the attention of her insensitive but more stable suitors. “Sooner or later, we all have to marry someone,” she sighs, referring to her more worldly best friend Gao Hong (MVP Papi Zhang, with realistic wit). Lili’s willingness to compromise, to her fear of the well-bred). But Hong and Xiaojun’s later exchanges outside the nightclub she’s currently singing into show how all these Linklater-esque slacker characters must come to terms with the new reality by the end of the film. After all, part of the process of growing up is that you don’t have infinite time to be successful in love, rebel against your elders, or build a career. Sometimes it’s actually too late.
For those who tend to view Chinese culture as a fortress impenetrable to outsiders, there is a tendency to be mindless narcissism and to believe that all their new ideas are brand new in the world, with goodwill. Pure friendliness of aimless young people. It may be a small discovery. Their views are informed not only by the traditional Chinese art they study, but also by posters by Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse, as well as Kurt Cobain and Michael Jackson, which are displayed in dormitory rooms and billboards. also has a similar poster. But if ‘Art College 1994’ is a very familiar snapshot of the mundane rhythm of life without direction to reach your goals in your early twenties, it’s as if you’ve experienced it once. It’s also a problem between us that did, and you might not want to spend two long years. I’ve been doing that for hours.
