UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE (2015) - ♦♦♦♦

Directed by - Pengfei

Written by - Isabelle Mayor, Pengfei

Starring - Ze Ying, Wenjie Luo, Fuyu Zhao

"PENGFEI's first feature is set among the drifting community of Beijing, and uses an architectural allegory to represent its society through portraying the lives of people living underground in a makeshift home adapted from a former bomb shelter, waiting for their big break that will finally help them move above ground, where things are not so rosey either. It particularly follows the lives of three characters, a boy and a girl but also a man living above ground, scratching and clawing to stay there despite his failing health and his bank account drying up. 

The examination of its setting also serves a unique and focused architectural allegory for the society of modern Beijing and for ambition. The architecture also evidently affects the meticulous stillness of the camerawork, whether it is the decay of the makeshift housing or the sublime futurism of the buildings of the wealthier classes. 

Out of this representation, UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE also tells stories of relationships, romance, friendship and surrogate father son relationships, but these plot devices are used sparingly in order to invite the viewer to a deeper engagement and in order to remain focused on the essential loneliness of the three characters who are the centre pieces of the film, whose lives mix naturally but who nevertheless remain untied to one another due to the essential distance between that remains between them."

Drama, France/China