Hyena

Bluesky

The winner of Locarno’s Best International Short Film Golden Leopard boasts style and a certain amount of swagger to tell what is, at heart, a familiar tale of bullying and pack mentality. Altay Ulan Yang has an eye for a striking image that makes this a visually inventive watch even if it is going over familiar turf

Intertitles advise that about a million students attend intensive art training camps in China to school them in western techniques, but that only about one percent of those will go on to pass. The specific story is picked up by a student known as Master (Hou Tianyu), who in the voiceover that runs through the film recalls the arrival of a new kid (Huo Zhengjie) who is quickly nicknamed 90 because of the extraordinary high mark he has managed to achieve during the course.

Yang capitalises on his choice of shooting in monochrome to the max by making 90 an ash blond, the light colour making him seem almost as unreal as the white stone sculptures the students are trying to emulate. Master, on the other hand, might be considered the runt of the pack, meaning that Leopard (played by Yang himself) scents the opportunity for blood. Targeting 90 also becomes an exercise in bullying Master into joining the pack hunt.

As the tension mounts, rain falls relentlessly, because there’s no doubt things look cooler in a downpour and cinematographers Fang Jiacheng and Hu Yinghai are adept at lighting. The imagery in general is notable, although the alligator sliding in and out of the frame is, like that rain, included less for narrative purposes than because it looks impressive. There is detailed craft work all round, from the art-cluttered classroom to 90s bed, which inexplicably has a load of sculpted heads on the upper bunk – health and safety would no doubt disapprove but there’s no knocking it as a visual. The sound design is also impressive, from the laughter of those hyena-like boys to the scratch of charcoal on canvas.

Yang may not be painting the most original picture but there’s no doubting he shows a knack for impressive framing.

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