2020-07-30

Official Selected Film of Asian New Talent Award│Wisdom Tooth: Present a Different Town in the North

“Actually, this film’s return to Shanghai International Film Festival was premeditatedly arranged.” Today, Director Liang Ming held a press briefing with his debut film Wisdom Tooth at Shanghai International Film Festival, and his opening sentence left the film in suspense. Originally, as early as 2012, Liang Ming participated in the venture project selection of Shanghai International Film Festival with this script prototype and was shortlisted, and he began the script polishing for 6 years from then on. “During the period, the plot has been changing but the roles such as Gu Xi, Gu Liang, Qingchang and Dongzi have always been in the script.”

This film reads the word from the perspective of the girl, Gu Xi, and presents a growth story in a border town in Northern China in the severe winter of 1999. Gu Xi’s actress Lv Xingchen and Qingchang’s actress Wang Jiajia also attended today’s meet-and-meet, and they depicted the vivid behind-the-scenes stories for the media friends on the scene. The actress Lv Xingcheng disclosed, “Many pop song taps used by Gu Xi in the film are the director’s own collections.”

In addition to the props with a sense of the age, the beautiful scenery of the homeland is also presented in the film scenes. Liang Ming comes from Lesser Khingan Mountains, Heilongjiang, and the severe winter in the northeast in the film is his memory of the hometown in his childhood. “At that time, there was no Internet so contacts fully depended on the letters and phone calls. We were out-of-the-way but the hometown is a beautiful town in my mind, and I want to show a different northeast with the help of the film.” The English name of the film is “Wisdom Tooth”, which is also a very regional processing, and it symbolizes the new stage of life faced by the heroine: “we call wisdom tooth as Lishiya (Chinese dialect) in our hometown, and having a wisdom tooth means that a person becomes thoughtful but it is also accompanied by a dull pain.”

In the course of growth, there are joys and sorrows, and the labor pains cannot be avoided. So is it on the road of film, and we always have to give up. The version of Wisdom Tooth selected as the official selected film of Asian New Talent Award on Shanghai International Film Festival this time has been half of the original version, and more than 30 scenes have been cut. It is a feature film written and directed by Liang Ming for the first time but his experience of acting in three works of Director Lou Ye enabled him to have his own methods of and opinions on the scene filming and actor control. Lv Xingchen said, “He gave the actors and actresses the full freedom and also guided them to ignore the cameras.” Different from the official selected films of Asian New Talent Award a few days ago, which happened to select the average persons as actors and actresses, Liang Min insisted on selecting the professional actors and actresses in the filming process although he encountered investment difficulties temporarily, “It is a very emotional work, and I hope that the professional actors and actresses will play and support the development of the story.”

When talking about the film gestation road for more than 8 years, Liang Ming sighed with emotion, “I’m glad that I haven’t give up, and I have finally insisted.” He has always believed firmly that as a creator, the only thing he can do is keeping creating. In fact, in the past half a year, facing the unexpected outbreak, the follow-up wok of the film Wisdom Tooth was suspended but he did not stop the pace of creation, and he also prepared the new script creation at home.

For Lv Xingchen, Shanghai International Film Festival has witnessed the course of her growth both in and out of the film. In 2010, she, at her age of 19, won the Best Actress Award of Shanghai International Film Festival by virtue of her first film work Sing Opposite the Door, and she has been the youngest award-winning actress of Shanghai International Film Festival till now. In addition, the work A Chinese Marriage of which Lv Xingchen acted as scriptwriter for the first time and another film We Are Living Things in which she starred have also been shortlisted in this year’s venture unit.