Fantasia XXIX Review: In THE FORBIDDEN CITY, Love (And Kung Fu) Conquers All!
Freaks Vs The Reich director Gabriele Mainetti went to Italy recently and filmed a kung fu movie, starring a career stunt performer now making her debut turn as an actress. Such momentum is the kind I like to see and report since I started writing and covering action actors in the process, and so you can imagine how my interest piqued with the entry of Yaxi Liu for The Forbidden City, following her stunt doubling and action credits in Disney’s Mulan, and opposite Philip Ng in Second Life.
Not for nothing either, with Liu proving herself at every turn from a script Mainetti storied and co-penned with Stefano Bises and Davide Serino. Clocked at well over two hours and some change, Mainetti’s The Forbidden City is everything you could want in a martial arts movie brimming with as much brutality as it is with ebullience, set against the backdrop of Rome’s Piazza Vittorio, a neighborhood bolstering vitality and diversity, and matched only by the city’s dichotomic underbelly.
Preambling our story is a flashback to China and its One Child Policy at the time, later setting up the trepidating journey of Mei (Yaxi Liu), who ventures to Rome years later in search of her missing sister. Infiltrating a seedy criminal network of human trafficking and laying waste to every hooligan in her path, it’s not too long before she crosses paths with Marcello (Enrico Borello), a cook struggling to keep his family’s restaurant afloat alongside his mother, Lorena (Sabrina Ferilli).
Little do Mei and Marcello know that there’s more to the story, when grisly revelations arise and bring attention to the town’s local Triad boss, Wang (Shanshan Chunyu). Caught in a web of mystery and a hunger vengeance, The Forbidden City lays firm the groundwork for two souls from different worlds, searching for answers and eventually finding them in each other, amid a sea of uncertainty, and secrets that will endanger them both.
That’s about as much as I can convey without giving away core specifics of Mainetti’s latest work, which is nothing short of an enrapturing tale of love and vengeance, and topped off with kung fu badassery. Both leads give off some of the best performances people will see, but it’s Liu who is very much the star of the show on nearly all fronts. For a freshman actor tasked with both action and drama, Liu nails it at every turn, and with a script that truly finds its spirit between both characters who, apart from using savvy smartphone apps to translate each other, provenly carry one another on vibes that wholly match the film’s scope and vision.
Laying it all thick though is a swathe of action sequences and set pieces that immerse you into the world Mei gets thrust in, all courtesy of supervisory work by stunt professional Liang Yang (Deadpool & Wolverine, The Equalizer 3). There’s a hallway fight, a stairwell fight, a warehouse fight, a blistering kitchen fight, a mahjong parlor fight, a warehouse fight, all seething with intensity, and delivering with as much gusto and gore as you could hope from a suitably violent martial arts epic, and with ample and sustenant drama to make The Forbidden City as wholesome and palatable a genre crowdpleaser worthy of praise.
It will help to keep an extra eye on Chunyu, along with co-star Marco Giallini who plays another local crimeboss named Annibale who has close ties to Marcello and his family from years earlier. Both characters contribute to the film’s more antiquated fervor in a film that challenges questions pertinent to matters of what falling in love means, and how far one is really willing to go to preserve it.
If you’re new to Mainetti, I would say The Forbidden City is a great place to start, particularly if you’re a martial arts head like me and anyone else in our shared fandom. It’s a fantastic ode to a city noted for its romantic aesthetics, and co-signed with an action star in Liu who will, quite literally and figuratively, sweep you off your feet.
The Forbidden City enjoyed its North American Premiere for the 29th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival. The film was just recently acquired for North Americam distribution by Well Go USA.
