Maxance Vincent
In the description for Gabriele Mainetti’s The Forbidden City on the Fantasia International Film Festival website, the Italian martial arts flick is described as “a knockout of a movie that slaps a huge smile on your face in a way no movie has since RRR.” Even if that were remotely true (spoiler alert: it isn’t), putting it on the same pedestal as S.S. Rajamouli’s masterpiece sets unrealistic standards that Mainetti’s genre blender will be as exhilarating, artful, and emotionally poignant as the 2022 Oscar-winning film that swept the world in ways we rarely see within the North American ecosystem.
However, as the film opened, with a fight scene so incredible it must be seen to be believed, I genuinely thought that perhaps the same sense of exhilaration would be as palpable as the feeling I had watching RRR in a (relatively empty) theater for the first time. Suffice to say, this excitement doesn’t last very long, even if Mainetti pays tribute to some of the best martial artists who have ever graced the silver screen by coding his three extended fight sequences with enough visual (and choreographic) references to Chang Cheh, Lau Kar-leung, Tsui Hark, and Zhang Yimou.
In any event, the film is so visually striking that one can extract many references from some of China’s greatest artists whenever Mainetti bursts into action. Even the restaurant itself, The Forbidden City, is a marvel of production design and looks immaculate whenever the filmmaker stages either its bravura fight scene (occurring at the film’s midsection), or sequences of intense dramatic power, where the fate of many characters is revealed. When the movie opened with such an amazingly intricate martial arts setpiece, where its protagonist, Mei (Yaxi Liu), fights off against a horde of baddies, after waking up from a truck to the criminal underground as she climbs to the top of a long staircase leading to a restaurant kitchen, where she uses every element at her disposal (including pans, cheese graters, and deep fryers), Mainetti introduces his picture as a playful tribute to the best martial arts cinema can offer.
The scene is frequently jaw-dropping and often hilarious, until Mei gets the culture shock of a lifetime when she realizes she is no longer in China, but in the streets of Rome. It’s at that point where Mainetti shifts gears and introduces us to our second protagonist, Marcello (Enrico Borello), a chef who is still reeling from the disappearance of his father, Alfredo. One day, Mei enters Marcello’s restaurant and demands to see Alfredo (Luca Zingaretti), believing he is responsible for the loss of her sister. We begin to understand that Marcello has been born into a life of crime, with a turf war between the Italian and Chinese gangs intensifying over the arrival of Mei, who brings back a story that has been buried six feet under for a long time.
Once all the characters are introduced, and the main dramatic throughline of The Forbidden City is properly laid out, Mainetti’s film sadly takes a nosedive and never recovers. As lavish as the production may be and as gorgeous as its photography consistently is throughout its 138 minutes, the movie sadly doesn’t have much forward-momentum when each narrative beat is seen coming a mile away, from the telegraphed quasi-forbidden romance between Mei and Marcello, to the dark secrets main antagonists Annibale (Marco Giallini) and Wang (Chunyu Shanshan) have been carrying for some time and will get revealed in the most outlandishly dramatic fashion. It’s all lethargically paced and leads to a conclusion that all of us know is coming, so much so that you can stop watching The Forbidden City at the halfway point, when the secret Annibale has been carrying is uncovered, and the characters must now discover the truth behind it.
It’s a damn shame that the screenplay is so dull, because whenever Mainetti breaks into action, The Forbidden City is a straight-up masterpiece of pure artistry. The way action acts as a catalyst for raw emotion is pitch-perfect, and Liu gives one of the year’s best performances as Mei, whose Kung Fu skills are more than just mere survival instincts for her. It’s a way of life, and ingrained in every part of her body. Unfortunately, the sense of alchemy she carries with Borello’s Marcello is nonexistent, and we never fully buy into their romance. Similarly, Annibale is a pure caricature, whose racist impulses are exaggerated to over-the-top heights, diluting the dramatic core at the forefront of Mainetti’s story. It leads to a conclusion so ridiculous that it feels more akin to an Italian soap opera than the lavish and carefully calculated pictures of a Zhang Yimou or Tsui Hark.
But there are only…*checks notes*…three action scenes of note in an almost two-and-a-half hour long picture, while the rest of it isn’t as interesting as the director thinks it is. Though one should laud Mainetti for respecting the culture as much as possible and not making his film another insensitive example of cultural appropriation, as Jacques Audiard recently did with the unwatchable Emilia Pérez. Mainetti loves Chinese cinema, whether from the Mainland or Hong Kong. In many respects, this feels like the Italian version of Chang Cheh’s Chinatown Kid, though not with the same breakneck pace (and insanity) as that movie. It’s sadly unfortunate that we didn’t get a better screenplay in between those action beats, because the movie might have been one of the festival’s best.
Next time, don’t compare anything (even if it is as good as S.S. Rajamouli’s film) to RRR. That was a singular cultural event bound not to be replicated. Even Rajamouli’s next movie, starring Mahesh Babu and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, will be vastly different than his last and could lead to a distinct worldwide movement, far beyond what we think will happen when it eventually releases…
SCORE: ★★1/2
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