Venice Days review - UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE by Pengfei

A tale of those who live in the city and those who live under it. UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE, feature directorial debut by PENGFEI had its world premiere in the VENICE DAYS section of the 72nd VENICE FILM FESTIVAL.

 

There are those who try to elevate their statur and those who are willing to play with their health and gamble their money in order to remain "above ground". The representation is quite literal in UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE by PENGFEI, which takes place in an overpopulated Beijing, and with an eye on the community of drifters, people who are willing to lower the standards of their living conditions as the wait for their big break in the big city. 

 

UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE shows this with great effect and success with its sophisticated storyline of intertwining lives. A young male earning a meager living salvaging furniture. A young woman working as a pole dancer, eager to move on to her next employment. One day, a work accident leaves him temporarily blinded, and this draws upon him the attentions of the female who starts caring for him. The two's platonic love affair blossoms in the decaying setting of an improvised makeshift home, adapted from a former bomb shelter - a city under a city, a modern catacomb. 

 

But to offer another viewpoint, PENGFEI also tells the story of the man's employer, a man whose failing health and drying up bank account does not prevent him from stubbornly holding out for an improbable good deal for the demolishing of his house. Despite the storyline of the film being surprisingly classicist as its core, the director opts for an approach that favours realism over a more blatantly melodramatic one.

On top of this, the film engages with a viewer in a number of challenging and very intelligent number of ways. The narrative is used sparingly, and particularly in its first part, its development seems to depend on a naturalistic portrayal of their everyday lives. Once we get a good feel of their rather ordinary lives with understandable concerns, then we can also empathise with each of their individual motives that still remain quite genuine and true. 
 
But its soft spoken ways do not entirely conceal the power of the allegories represented by the meticulously static cinematography's relation to its environment and architecture, which enhances the contrast between the decaying catacombs, abandoned, demolished houses with the almost futuristic, minimalism of the linear patterns of the big office buildings and housing estates. 
 
Such a contrast is priceless in its representation of class division, and the oppression and sacrifice of the drifters makes the lightness of the romance between the central young man and young woman character is all the more vulnerable - and for that reason doomed from the start.