‘Bad Genius’ highestgrossing Thai release ever in China
BEIJING: Finishing a strong second in Chinese box-office rankings on its opening weekend, ‘Bad Genius' is now the highest-grossing Thai release ever in China.
The exam-scam caper has been a triumph for distributor Hengye Pictures.
The company pulled off a marketing campaign as taut and precise as the film's school-hall schemes.
Exhibitors and heavyweight bloggers were invited to exclusive previews, while full-time students attended sneak previews free of charge – gestures that generated significant buzz in the run-up to the film's release on, Oct 13.
Some see the success of ‘Bad Genius' as proof that flat-fee imports have become as lucrative for Chinese film distributors as the Hollywood blockbusters that are unspooling as so-called shared-revenue titles.
According to showbiz news portal Yule Zibenlun, 'Bad Genius' would yield a profit of at least 70 million yuan (US$10.5 million) for Hengye against an outlay of 3.3 million yuan for the Chinese rights.
‘Bad Genius' offers a heavy dose of fantastical, adrenalinefuelled thrills – the kind of entertainment that youngsters consider value for money. But the film also works because it is grounded in an exam-obsessed reality that chimes with China's own, but has rarely been depicted in Chinese films.
Despite being part of most Chinese teenagers' rite of passage, exams (ranging from small in-class tests to the gaokao, the feared university entrance assessment) have never been considered appealing fodder for high-school films, a genre anchored mostly by nostalgia and romance.
The closest a Chinese teen film has come to addressing the subject is Liu Jie's ‘Young Style' (2013), which plays up the anxiety surrounding the gaokao to comical and melodramatic effect. Revolving around a teenager's relationships as he prepares for his second stab at the gaokao, it's more a comedy about youthful dreams than about the gritty process that facilitates or undermines them.
‘Bad Genius' is all about that process, its protagonists beating the system with ever more audacious schemes. One can easily understand why young Chinese viewers have rallied to Thai characters who cheat the state-backed machine. The film provides release, perhaps, for all the pent-up angst felt by examtakers past and present.
And ‘Bad Genius' hints at the dark side of a biased system. The story is about two financially insolvent protagonists who risk their futures for clueless, rich brats. Director Nattawut Poonpiriya has delivered a thinly veiled condemnation of the rampant inequality that exists between social classes in contemporary Thailand.
This echoes the situation in China, and Nattawut's criticism of Thailand's exam-obsessed education system is equally applicable to China's. The gaokao, for example, has been criticised for discriminating against poor and provincial students who contend with a smaller university admission quota than their more well-off, cosmopolitan counterparts. Such social problems in China rarely receive an airing on screen.
Director Zhou Hao's ‘Senior Year' (2005) is one of few examples of a filmmaker challenging the gaokao system and the oppressive social values it enshrines. Set among students preparing for the exam at a school in Fujian province, the documentary reveals how an inhuman system traumatises young minds – in this case, children seeking a way out of rural poverty.
‘Senior Year' was critically acclaimed, winning a best documentary award at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and screening at prestigious events such as the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
Though the film was made with Chinese money, the response to it in China was more muted, the official narrative being that the gaokao provides a level playing field on which students from all backgrounds can strive for a better future.