THE BUTCHER, THE CHEF AND THE SWORDSMAN Review

THE BUTCHER, THE CHEF AND THE SWORDSMAN should be a film to make me very happy. I spend a lot of my column inches here at ScreenAnarchy complaining about the current state of Chinese Cinema, its overwhelming predilection towards nauseating nationalism, its repetitive regurgitation of the greatest moments of its history and the general lack of creativity that goes into its output. Surely a film that displays as much energy, enthusiasm and visual inventiveness as director Wuershan's debut does, a film without so much as a whiff of political or anti-colonial rhetoric, should be cause for some celebration. However, that is not exactly the case - and I actually find myself wishing that the director (in a country notorious for inhibiting its artists' creative freedom) had been reined in slightly by his producers. There is no denying that his film contains numerous flourishes of genuine talent and inspiration, but more often than not it suffers from a stylistic overload that is simply exhausting to watch.

As the title suggests, the film consists of three intertwining stories, based around each of the titular characters and how their lives become involved with a powerful meat cleaver, fashioned from the swords of a number of legendary warriors. The film is book-ended by "Desire", the story of Chopper (Liu Xiaoye), a butcher who intends to marry the gorgeous courtesan, Madame Mei (Kitty Zhang). However, first he must get past a notorious warrior known as Big Beard, not to mention the brothel's Madam. The second story, "Vengeance", focuses on a diminutive Chef (Mi Dan), who is ordered to prepare his famous eight-course banquet for the formidable Eunuch Liu. If the food does not meet the eunuch's satisfaction the chef will be executed, so he trains his mute kitchen servant (Japanese actor Ando Masanobu) to replace him, unaware that the mute has a secret agenda of his own. The third story, "Greed", details how a much-feared swordsman (Ashton Xu) steals the melted-down remnants of a collection of famous swords and commissions a blacksmith to fashion them into an all-powerful weapon.

The stories themselves are humorous, exciting and nicely intertwined, as the legendary weapon is passed down from one owner to the next over a number of years and bizarre circumstances. The script introduces a complex time structure, layering flashbacks and temporal shifts one on top of the other, and it is sometimes difficult to keep track of exactly what is going on all the time. Graciously, Wuershan employs a range of different creative styles to each flashback to help audiences keep their bearings, including animation, aged cine-camera footage, and even a video game-style punch-up, but this does jar somewhat with the film's period setting. Even when he's not experimenting with different aesthetics, Wuershan is unable to keep his camera still and shots are rarely longer than a second in length.

Audiences familiar with recent Chinese comedies like Ning Hao's CRAZY RACER and Zhang Yimou's A WOMAN, A GUN AND A NOODLE SHOP will be familiar with the kind of overt histrionics that are de rigueur for actors in films such as these. Couple all the wailing and screaming with the hyperactive, intrusive camerawork, ADD-inhibited editing and the incessant fluctuations of visual style and what could have been playfully anachronistic in moderation, ultimately overpowers the viewer, inciting exhaustion rather than entertainment. There is little doubt that Wuershan has talent and with a producer by his side who knows when to say enough is enough, I have every confidence that he'll produce exciting and entertaining cinema in the future. But with THE BUTCHER, THE CHEF AND THE SWORDSMAN, he has force-fed his audience an entire wedding banquet, rather than offering a tasty selection of dim sum for us to savour in moderation.