THE FORBIDDEN CITY
It's safe to say that Gabriele Mainetti's La città proibita (aka The Forbidden City) is the least typical film screened by CinemaItaliaUK. This martial arts saga is the director's third feature, but the first not to have been co-scripted by Nicola Guaglianone, after They Call Me Jeeg Robot (2015) and Freaks vs the Reich (2021).
In Fujian Province in 1995, a couple who have broken China's one-child policy (Jia Yimin and Elisa Wong) decide to raise Yun in public, while keeping Mei a secret. Father Xiao teaches the girls martial arts and this comes in handy a quarter of a century later, when Mei (Yaxi Liu) comes to Rome to find the sister who had gone missing after leaving home to make enough money to pay the fine that would allow Mei to become a citizen.
Having been trafficked, Mei is ordered to strip in the basement of a restaurant-cum-brothel that is run by triad boss, Mr Wang (Shanshan Chunyu). But Mei defies the madam (Sheena Hao) and pulps the henchmen who try to pin her down, as she kicks, punches, and slashes her way up a winding staircase into the kitchens. Pans full of boiling oil make effective weapons, as Mei dodges cleavers and knives before walking calmly through the dining area of The Forbidden City and out into the bustling Esquilino district. Unable to speak a word of Italian, she makes her way to Ristorante da Alfredo, where she has been told (by an old woman in the brothel) she will find her sister.
This busy trattoria is run by Marcello (Enrico Borello) and his mother, Lorena (Sabrina Ferilli), but it's in debut because her husband seemingly ran away with a Chinese prostitute. When Marcello tries to explain this to Mei using the translate function on her phone, she threatens to beat him up. However, she realises he is telling the truth and storms out of the kitchen that has filled with smoke because Marcello had been distracted by two English customers complaining because Lorena had tried to over-charge them.
The restaurant is protected by local crook, Annibale (Marco Giallini), and his henchman, Cip (Claudio Pallitto) and Cioppe (Daniele Mosca), who pay Wang a call to ward him off. However, Annibale also retains his youthful crush on Lorena and he reassures her that she will be safe as long as she remembers what she owes him.
When Mei reduces Cio and Cioppe to gibbering wrecks in the after hours marketplace, Annibale recruits Malik (Seck Abdoulaye) and a couple of his fellow migrants to be his new crew (this after he had told Marcello that Rome has become like Asterix's Gaulish village because it's forever under siege from foreigners). But Mei gets past them with an abducted member of Wang's gang and forces Marcello to drive out to the spot where Alfredo and Yun were burie. After the exertion of digging, he vomits on seeing the corpses, but Mei weeps over the sister who had promised to protect her and she send her on her way in a burning boat.
Shocked by what he has witnessed, Marcello confides in Annibale, who tells him that his father had fallen in love and had put Yun into a love nest that ran him into debt. They pay a visit to the apartment, as does Mei, who touches some of her sister's clothing before applying her red lipstick and putting on a red dress in order to launch an attack on Wang's place. Despite being heavily outnumbered, she holds her own before being overpowered. Even then, she manages to fight back and crashes out of the window into the street, where she is picked up by a delivery driver who dumps her outside Marcello's restaurant. Here, she is found by his kitchen assistant, Śānti (Tomal Islam), who takes her to his family home and calls Marcello to collect her. He carries her home and tries to convince Mei that he had nothing to do with Yun's death and that her sister had been in love with his father.
Returning from having watched Annibale set light to his car to remove traces of incriminating evidence, Marcello is taken aback when he sees Mei scrubbed in in one of Yun's dresses. He cooks for her and she gulps down the noodles, pausing to offer him a taste across the table. But she is frustrated when he locks her in the apartment (even though it's for her own good) and he returns to find she has trashed the place. As it's dark, he agrees to take her on a tour of the city on his Vespa and she is delighted by the landmarks, as they whizz along. When they stop by the Forum, however, Mei becomes emotional when she talks about the sacrifice that Yun had made for her and how she wishes she could have told her how grateful she was. Marcello puts Mei to bed and returns home to find Lorello waiting for him. She has done Mei's washing and asks about his `girlfriend', but he is evasive and says nothing about Annibale asking permission to take her to dinner - as they are family.
Finding Mei missing from the apartment, Marcello goes looking for her after she has confronted Wang about Yun. She wounds him and leaves to find Marcello doing tai-chi in the park. They go home together and she tells him what Wang had revealed to her. Alfredo (Luca Zingaretti) had made a deal to buy Yun (Haijin Ye) from Wang so that they could go away together and he had agreed to sell him the trattoria as part of the deal. Being a bigot who wanted to keep his little patch free from outsiders, Annibale believed his friend had betrayed his Italian roots and had shot him. Seeing Yun sobbing over her dead lover, Wang had shot her because she was no longer of any use to him.
Hearing the truth, Marcello goes in search of Annibale. He is dining with Lorena at the trattoria and Marcello takes over in the kitchen from Śānti to cook him the noodle dish he had made for Mei. Annibale is affronted to be served with foreign muck, but Marcello reminds his mother how much Alfredo had liked it and regretted that it disagreed with him. Refusing to listen, Annibale leaves. But Marcello follows to taunt him that his reign over the district is over because his views are outdated. He pulls a gun and is so distraught when Lorena and Mei (who has climbed across a roof to escape from the locked apartment) follow them to the back alley to see what's going on that he shoots himself in the chest and Marcello cradles him, even though he had done so much harm to his family.
Years pass and Lorena runs the restaurant, with Śānti as the chef and Malik as the pot man. Mei teaches martial arts classes in a small Chinese town, while Marcello cooks for their two children, a boy and a girl. She smiles at him across the dinner table, perhaps still surprised that her trip to Rome had had such an unexpected outcome.
There are several surprises in a scenario slickly scripted by Mainetti, Stefano Bises, and Davide Serino. The sequence in The Forbidden City seems to follow on from the rural Chinese opening, but Mei strolls out following an extended set-to on to a Roman street and almost into the path of an oncoming scooter. Mainetti also makes the most of every twist, as Mei's investigation entangles her further into Marcello's world and its dark underbelly. Yet, for all the neatness of the writing, it's the choreographing of what we might call the `pizza fu' action that leaves the deeper impression. Owing more to Sammo Hung than Jackie Chan, the fights have their slapstick moments. But the emphasis is on the precision and power that enables the elfin Mei to overcome bigger males, who could pack a punch if they could only get one in edgeways.
If helps, of course, that Yaxi Liu is so gracefully potent. Having been Liu Yifei's double in Mulan (2020), she has made the transition from stuntwoman to actress with the same impeccable timing she brings to her Bruce Lee-inspired Wushu fighting style. Intently impassive for much of the time, she adeptly handles comic business like translating by smartphone or bashing heavies with flowers and fresh fish, while also showing a more vulnerable side after she's badly beaten and when she weeps over her sister's shallow grave. Enrico Borello makes a generous co-star, as he essentially stooges to Liu, while allowing Marco Giallini to steal scenes as bigoted dastard, Annibale. Sabrina Ferilli also has a couple of choice moments, as she slips champagne on to the bills of unsuspecting customers and quizzes her son about his new lady friend.
Despite a glorious nocturnal Vespa ride that pays homage to William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953) and Nanni Moretti's Dear Diary (1994), the romcomedic element is rightly downplayed to avoid it deflecting Mei's vengeful purpose. But the closing scene of domestic bliss still feels a bit unearned, in spite of its sly aside on Italian masculinity and the contrast it offers with the migrant experience of Rome. It's a rare misstep, however, as Mainetti again reveals his gift for offbeat storytelling, as he riffs on Wang's contention that when it comes to Italy, `everything is permitted and nothing is important'.
Particularly noteworthy is the sense of place Mainetti generates, as he and cinematographer Paolo Carnera make the most of the Chinatown district around Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. Production designer Andrea Castorina and set decorator Marco Martucci also do a splendid job of creating the worlds apart interiors of The Forbidden City (with its multiple storeys and network of subterranean tunnels) and Ristorante da Alfredo, while Francesco Di Stefano's kinetic editing of the pulsating martial arts sequences avoids the annoying Hollywood habit of cutting away on impact to mask the stunts (although there is more chopping than in classical Asian pictures). With Fabio Amurri's score remaining the right of pastiche, this is a highly entertaining, if occasionally meandering 138-minute caper and it will be fascinating to see what will next take Mainetti's directorial fancy.