Gripping kidnapping mystery starring Yao Chen struggles against cliches
SHANGHAI: Two extraordinary actresses bring emotional depth to Lost, Found, a story of universal horror: the abduction of a small child.
Chen portrays an attractive legal eagle whose court uniform is bright red lipstick and grey business tailleur; she is a selfconfident professional woman who overplays her hand as career woman and mother.
Ma Yili is her daughter’s mousy, apparently perfect nanny who hides a back-tragedy from her employer. In a film that threatens to collapse into a moralising drama about women’s proper role in society, they push the story onto much richer psychological ground.
This marks Lu Yue’s fourth film as a director. (He is best known as an award-winning DP whose glamorous cinematography on Zhang Yimou’s Shanghai Triad won him an Oscar nomination.)
Leaving the photography in the competent but never overtly flashy hands of Cheng Ma, he directs this women’s story with compassion and empathy, though perhaps with too much obviousness and avoidance of grey areas. Lost, Found bowed in Shanghai as one of the two Chinese entries in competition.
Though the title may seem like a spoiler, it works on many levels, including finding oneself and coming to terms with the way things are. As far as selfdiscovery goes, both women have a long row to hoe in the opening scenes.
Lawyer Li Jie (Yao, who played the self-serving editor in Caught in the Web) is callously fighting a custody case against a desperate mother. When the woman tearfully insists she gave up everything for her child, including her career, Li tells her this was a very bad idea: “A woman’s life should never be about only love and marriage.” Even if the viewer agrees with her, a little emotional rapport with a fellow mom might be humanly desirable.
What she doesn’t know yet, though the audience does because of the opening flash-forward, is that her smug professional ice will soon melt when she goes home to find an empty crib and the nanny vanished.
Her one-year-old daughter Duoduo has been living with her since her doctor husband moved out in preparation for their divorce.
It’s a custody battle she intends to win permanently. But her poor judgment in choosing an unqualified nanny, not to mention her emotional breakdown when the child goes missing, raises questions about how reliable a mother she really is.
Ma brings disarming sincerity to the role of the nanny, making scene after scene movingly believable, playing working-class human to Yao’s aloof middleclass perfection.
Yao is equally bold and fine as Li, who makes a hairraising, last-ditch appeal for her daughter’s life.