Question and Answer Session with Director Zhang Yuan
About The Film
'Little Red Flowers' is based on Chinese writer Wang Shuo's semi-autobiographical novel 'Could Be Beautiful'. What attracted you to this novel?
I realised that, no matter how young children might be (my daughter was not yet two years old), they have a complete soul, a full set of emotions.
I've been preparing for this film for six years. Wang Shuo gave me a copy of his novel before I started editing my film 'Seventeen Years', and I read it for the first time in Italy in 1999 while I was in post production. In the middle of reading the book, I was watching a cartoon called 'The Little Flying Elephant' with my daughter Yuanyuan. I noticed that she had tears in her eyes as she watched the baby elephant clinging to its mother. I realised that, no matter how young children might be (my daughter was not yet two years old), they have a complete soul, a full set of emotions.
I also marvelled at Wang Shuo's ability to remember so much about the past. I'm trying to do the same, because memories of my own past are fragmented and incomplete. So to make a film from Wang Shuo's novel is also an effort to recapture, to discover my own childhood.
How was your own kindergarten experience? Did you fit in, or were you a rebellious child, like the film's protagonist Qiang?
I was kind of like Qiang when I was a kid. I was often ill, so I couldn't join in with the other kids when they were having fun playing together. I couldn't be a member of the group.
Anyway, when I got back from Italy, I started working with Wang Shuo and screenwriter Ning Dai onthe screenplay. But we had difficulty finding a way to tell the story. Finally, last year, I thought, "Oh, I've got it!".
What was the breakthrough?
I realised that to tell the story well, I have to tell it from my own perspective, from the director's perspective.
In the beginning I was thinking of finding a point of view, a children's perspective to tell the story. But this turned out to be very difficult. Finally, last year, I realised that to tell the story well, I have to tell it from my own perspective, from the director's perspective.
I've conceived the film like an animated carton played by real people. It's like a parable that is not realistic, although it has something real about it. The idea of making a film filled with little children, depicted like Lilliputians was exciting.
'Little Red Flowers' doesn't seem to resemble a standard Chinese children's film. Is that your intention?
In the past, all children's films coming out of China treated children as if they were adults. I hope with this work to restore the reality of children's lives to film. In fact, this isn't my first film about a child. At the beginning of my career I made 'Mama' (1992), which centres on an 11-year-old boy. I even inserted a tribute to 'Conduct Zero' in that film — when the child plucks feathers out of a down pillow.
The story's time and place are not specified, slthough it's possible to identify a setting as Beijing round the late 1950s, when Wang Shuo himself was a young child.
I'm interested in a fable's lack of specificity. I noticed that children in kindergarten today are really not that different from the children back then. They face teh same issues, issue that are just as relevant today as they were back then...
Most psychologists describe the period from 3 years old onward as a critical period for socialisation. So I've chosen a story about children at this age to address the genesis of personality, and of an individual's relationship to society.
We all say that childhood is happy. But in making this film, I discovered that childhood is not what people normally make it out to be. Children's lives are more complex, and their hopes, disappointments, and especially their loneliness are comparable to adults', and may linger through their whole lives.
Under the surface, this film seems to be talking about issues of power and discipline that surround children.
I'm quite interested in the genesis of power: how power shapes personality, how power defines characters. Free will vs. control; the individual vs. the masses; all these issues interest me. A story about early childood allows us to see how power relations play out right from the beginning.
About The Children
Describe how you found the children who acted in 'Little Red Flowers'
The moment I spotted Dong Bowen in a group of kids, I decided this is it, this is our guy.
We had a crew combing the entire city of Beijing for about 4 or 5 months. We put ads for child actors in newspapers, and went to all the large kindegartens. We must have interviewed and videotaped over 20,000 kids. This was a very laborious process. And casting the male lead was the most difficult, until I stumbled upon 5 year old Dong Bowen, who looks so much like the book's author Wang Shuo. This was something uncanny. The moment I spotted Dong Bowen in a group of kids, I decided this is it, this is our guy.
He of course had had no experience acting. But the moment you see this eyes, you can tell he is perfect for the role. Because his eyes touch people: it's the life inside. When we test screened him, he walked with his arm and leg in sync in a way that was both funny and very serious. It's his seriousness that captures your attention.
How did you handle the needs of the children over the 80 day day shooting period?
We set up a virtual kindergarten. We had to arrange everything: where the kids would sleep, what nutritious food they would eat... There were assistant directors working together with nurses and kindergarten teachers: they were all responsible for the children's feeding, care, and studies.
Dong Bowen's little co-star Nanyuan is played by Ning Yuanyuan, who is your daughter. What was it like to work with your daughter??
My confidence in making a film about such young kids actually came from my daughter, since she had acted so successfully last year in a TV series I directed.
This experience was interesting, watching your daughter through a different perspective, on the monitor. Of course, there were times when she surprised me. My confidence in making a film about such young kids actually came from my daughter, since she had acted so successfully last year in a TV series I directed. In this film, it became evident that not only can she act, but that she's a very different person on screen from her real life.
What was it like to work with Dong Bowen and the other children?
It's the hardest thing, to work with kids. It's a lot harder than working with the toughest of adult actors. Work ethics doesn't apply to kids. Instead, you have to create a fun atmosphere. If they like it and enjoy it they'll do the work. Take for example the scene where Bowen swears at Teacher Tang: he really relished that. No matter how many takes you do, he stays with you.
Bowen is quite a character, with a lot of complex motivations. Here's one story: the assistant director had to resort to a strategy to have him cry once on cue. The assistant director would say "You're not going home for two months. You're not going to see your parents until you do this right". And that would work: Bowen would start to cry. But later the trick wouldn't work so well, because he'd figure out what's up. Instead, when Bowen was on the verge of crying but couldn't quite do it, he would coach the assistant director, saying: "Say you will keep me here for four months. Or why not say six months?"
That's some interesting psychology at work.
