“Hot Soup “ Movie Review

 

“Hot Soup “

Movie Review

 

 

"Hot Soup" is directed by Ming Zhang, written by Yuxi Gong, Qinyu Liu, Ming Wu and Ming Zhang, cinematography by Meng Wang, editor by Jin Li, music by Han Han.

Hot Soup is a film about happiness, and it is much more accessible than director Ming Zhang's standard fare and features with an impressive cast including rising stars Chen Duling and Li Meng. But then he chooses an impenetrable structure, so the film as a whole is not the best way to describe it.

The film follows four young women in Shanghai. Xiao Huang played by Chen Duling is a Ph.D student doing a thesis on the relationship between economic growth and happiness and making frequent visits to a spa hotel to talk to her mildly lecherous supervisor Professor Jin played by Zhao Yanguozhang.

Wawa, played by Song Fangyuan, is the daughter of a nightclub owner and gangster Lao Du, played by Chen Shengdi, who, for inexplicable reasons, collects survey data on happiness. Xiao Shen, played by Li Meng, compiles a survey about happiness, but mainly she spends a lot of time in a taxi with Chen Huo, an immigration consultant and Uber driver played by singer Zuo Yi.

Finally, Tangdong, played by Liu Wenyi, lives with AI developer Qi Youcang in an expensive apartment in central Shanghai. She wants a child, but he doesn't. She makes him hot soup to improve his fertility.

But gradually, the stories of the four women blur together. Thematically, it's very interesting, and the idea of ​​dark storylines is something that director Zhang has pursued before. The film touches on many topical issues and some scenes work well.

These features are worth watching at, but overall, it doesn't make sense. Individual stories, while raising interesting issues, are not convincing. For example, Huang goes from an undergrad student asking for a letter of recommendation to Princeton to be lectured by his senior supervisor about his failures.

If you're wondering where the stories are going, you might be asking the same question at the end of the movie. The generally excellent cast are underused because of the multiplicity of stories and the fact that few are really developed. It's nice to see director Zhang trying to be more accessible, but the structure and editing don't do justice to the film's potential.

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