It
is the street where Guan Lifen works, but young Liu Qiuming’s attraction to
Forest Lane is still a lot like the old Lerner & Loewe standard. However,
this side street is mysteriously invisible to GPS systems. Infatuation will
lure him back to Forest Lane, but it will also bring him to the attention of China’s
security and surveillance apparatus. That will not be a happy turn of events in
Vivian Qu’s Trap Street (clip here), which screens
during this year’s New Directors/New Films, co-presented by the Film Society of
Lincoln Center and MoMA.
Liu
has had some bad luck, but he is chipping away at his debts through his jobs as
a digital surveyor and a surveillance system installer (and sweeper on the
side). Then he saw Guan Lifen walking along Forest Lane. Much to his delight
and his older partner’s displeasure, they must redo the sleepy side street the
next day, because the system disallowed their data. Liu’s lingering pays off with
the opportunity to give Guan a lift home. Better still, the business card
holder she left in the back seat gives him an excuse to contact her again.
Unfortunately, it will be her condescendingly gracious boss who comes to
retrieve it.
Of
course, Liu is not ready to abandon his strategy of loitering on Forest Lane. For
a while, it appears his efforts might bear fruit, until things go very wrong
indeed. Small fries like Liu simply are not equipped to defend themselves when
the state lowers the Kafkaesque boom. Frankly, he lacks the sufficient confidence
or vocabulary to even protest his situation.
Right
off the bat, Trap earns points for
not indulging in clichéd as-seen-through the grainy black-and-white CCTV lens sequences.
In fact, the surveillance and paranoia motifs are introduced relatively slowly
and subtly. Likewise, Liu’s history of victimization extends beyond his
immediate problems with the secret police, giving the film even wider significance.
Like
many independent Chinese films, Trap does
not exactly move at the speed of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, but there is
quiet power in the scenes shared by Liu and Guan. Lü Yulai (looking maybe two
thirds of his youthful thirty one years) and He Wenchao (a filmmaker in her own
right) develop some genuine screen chemistry together, while the latter still
maintains an alluring air of mystery.
