The ‘Hangout Movie’ Concept Has Made Its Way to the Far East

How familiar are you with the notion of the “hangout movie”? It’s a phrase that’s been bandied about regularly enough in publications, websites, and podcasts to make a critic sit up and take notice. As it turns out, this sub-genre has less to do with gathering together a group of like-minds to watch a particular movie than with watching a group of like-minds gathered within a particular movie.Would “My Dinner With André” (1981) count as a hangout movie? You remember: director Louis Malle’s film of Wallace Shawn and André Gregory playing lightly fictionalized versions of themselves over a sumptuous repast at Café des Artistes. Given the standard for hangout movies — “Dazed and Confused” (1993) and “Clerks” (1994) are the go-to films of the genre — a certain shapelessness of plot would seem to be a prerequisite. Did I read that “Rio Bravo” (1959) counts as a hangout movie? Maybe, though John Wayne would likely not have given much credence to a designation quite that casual.“The Breaking Ice,” according to its director, Singapore-born Anthony Chen, is many things: “a leap of faith,” a “wild adventure,” and “a love letter.” It’s also a hangout movie involving a group of Chinese men and women who are, in terms of demographics, trailing not too far beyond the director’s generational rear view mirror. Mr. Chen took his camera and crew to Yanji, a midsize city in northeast China that is home to a sizable population of ethnic Koreans.How Mr. Chen convinced a trio of China’s hottest young stars to make the trek to this forbidding, isolated, and cold locale speaks, I suppose, to his conviction. Yet Liu Haoran, Zhou Dongyu and Qu Chuxiao most certainly did — which is entirely appropriate given how much time their characters spend trekking throughout the run of “The Breaking Ice.” Where do they go, you may ask? The perimeter of North Korea is one destination, as is Heaven Lake, which is, it seems, the home of a creature that is the Chinese equivalent of the Loch Ness monster.Haofeng (Mr. Haoran), Nana (Ms. Dongyu), and Xiao (Mr. Chuxiao) don’t meet up with the Lake Tianchi monster, but they do have an encounter with a bear in a scene that skirts the boundaries of Magic Realism. Otherwise, there’s little magic in the lives of these 20-somethings. Haofeng has traveled to Yanji to attend a wedding, but spends most of the festivities avoiding phone calls from his shrink. He’s glum, our friend from Shanghai.Haofeng ends up on a tour bus on which Nana is the guide. She’s perky but cynical and takes a shine to Haofeng, particularly when his phone is either misplaced or stolen. Nana invites Haofeng to tag along for dinner with her friend Xiao, a cook at a local restaurant. Xiao isn’t happy about the unexpected guest: He has unrequited feelings for Nana.Whereupon our three protagonists proceed to hang out for days on end. They go out to dinner, drink too much, engage in behavior that should’ve been abandoned in adolescence, and make romantic overtures — some of which are consummated, some of which aren’t. All the while, we’re provided with dribs and drabs about the failures and frustrations of each individual. One is close to suicidal, another a potential Olympic athlete, and the third constrained by the small-town parameters of Yanji.Given its piecemeal structure and dawdling tempo, “The Breaking Ice” seems longer than its 97 minutes. A subplot concerning a criminal on the run has little bearing on the misadventures of our heroes and is too obscure a sidetrack to offer much in the way of metaphorical import. The three leads are engaging, but only Ms. Dongyu is given much to work with as Nana, a character at odds with both her ambitions and her family. Otherwise, we’re left to marvel at Yanji, yet another nook of the world to which we were previously oblivious. That, in and of itself, is something.

The ‘Hangout Movie’ Concept Has Made Its Way to the Far East

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