Shui shuo wo bu zai hu
*/****
starring Gong Feng, Liping Lu
written and directed by JianXin Huang
by Walter Chaw A miserable, over-directed bit of heated allegorical melodrama, JianXin Huang's The Marriage Certificate seeks to monumentalize the loss of the titular document and its disastrous effect on the marriage between a goofy shrink and his grasping wife into a jab at the rigidity of the communist Chinese bureaucracy. It succeeds in being cutesy in an Amélie sort of way (told from the point-of-view of an insipid little girl complete with bad voiceovers, double ponytail flips, and rough animated skits) while being a disaster in terms of satire and the basic precepts of mature entertainment. Shifting tone discordantly from scene to scene with a restless camera zoomed and shaken to no good end, The Marriage Certificate makes unfocused stops in a mental institution populated with a collection of Cuckoo's Nest stereotypes and punctuated by visits to various government offices that make the gentlest of fun of the Chinese government (and women). Though appreciative of the difficulties of working within a restrictive system to create works of political resonance, The Marriage Certificate is so broad and winking that it's hard to believe that this thing wasn't setting off klaxons and clarions every step along the way. Perversely light-hearted even as it strays into the bizarre and grating, the picture is blissfully forgettable though, admittedly, the unforgivable winsomeness of its conclusion proves difficult to exorcise.
