By Zhao Kun
Chinese family drama Ocean Heaven opened at this year's Shanghai International Film Festival, and after fighting it up in movies for nearly 30 years, Jet Li takes a big turn by playing a terminally ill father desperately looking for a home for his 21-year-old autistic son, Da Fu (Wen Zhang).
The lives of those with autism in China are almost always bleak due to the country's unstable social safety net, which likely explains why the film's kindhearted director decided to make every character in the movie a model citizen after realizing that the system wouldn't provide much help to Da Fu.
As someone who volunteered for 14 years at an educational organization for autistic children, first-time director Xue Xiaolu wrote and directed Ocean Heaven with a meager 7 million yuan budget. It's likely that Li also "volunteered" his services for this film since the financing didn't even come to the amount Li is paid to star in a film.
But even while juggling several subplots Ocean Heaven will likely struggle to maintain the attention of its audiences. After Li's character is diagnosed with cancer, we only see him teaching his son basic living skills, and most will likely become bored way beyond anyone on screen.
And while inarguably talented at kicking ass and taking names, when trying for dramatic Li tends to employ only basic emotive states which gives his characters sublime qualities that are just too kind to be real.
The young actor Wen received his first acting award at the Shanghai International Film Festival in addition to tons of rave reviews, but most seemed to overlook how overstated his performance in this movie actually was.
Wen's mechanical characterizations of autism do not seem to have required much effort on his part, and any other graduate of the Central Academy of Drama would have done just as well to appear abnormal and neurotic on the big screen.
Nonetheless, on a scale of one to 10, Ocean Heaven gets a six.
Zhao Kun is a writer for China Drive on CRI EZFM (FM91.5 in Beijing). He can be reached at zhaokun123@gmail.com. China Drive is a radio magazine show on the air every day from 5 to 7 pm.