For the past six years, Fan Bingbing has been in purgatory. Once a rising international star with crossover roles in American franchises like “X-Men” and “Iron Man,” the Chinese actor has been keeping a low profile since she was hit with massive fines for unpaid taxes in 2018. So it’s a big deal that she’s starring in “Green Night,” an edgy indie set in South Korea where Fan has lesbian sex, gets caught up in the drug-dealing underworld, and generally behaves in ways not befitting the morals of a Chinese film star. She’s sticking her neck out for this film. Too bad it’s not a more memorable one.
“Green Night” opens under the sickly fluorescent lights at Incheon International Airport, where customs agent Jin Xia (Fan) feels a surge of electricity when she locks eyes with an unnamed, green-haired passenger (Lee Joo-young) in her security line. She pulls the woman aside for a pat down, and blushes when she spots a tattoo between the woman’s breasts. The chemistry between them is intense, and before Xia knows what’s happening, she’s giving the woman a ride into Seoul on her scooter.
They don’t kiss just then. First, they have to get rid of the drugs the woman was smuggling through the airport — Xia was right; there was something going on with her — which leads to the duo ending up at Xia’s estranged husband’s place. (This happens seemingly out of nowhere, as many of the events in this film do.) Without revealing too much, from there, “Green Night” pivots into even more of a lovers-on-the-run Sapphic crime picture than it was previously, albeit one without much of a sense of forward momentum.
“Green Night” is set at Christmastime, and director Han Shuai makes atmospheric (and occasionally ironic) use of twinkling lights and shiny ornaments in her moody vision of Seoul’s gritty concrete underbelly. Neon pinks and blues at a bowling alley and the blue and orange cast of street lights at night enhance the Wong Kar-wai vibe — although, unlike Wong’s films, Han’s is impressionistic to a fault. “Green Night” is at once plot-heavy and all vibes, and the emphasis on ambiance de-emphasizes, or outright passes over, key details that would otherwise hold the story together.
Xia and her green-haired lover have a classic “uptight closet case meets free spirit who inspires her to live out loud” dynamic, but this, too, is lopsided. Fan’s performance as Xia is relatively nuanced, with room for regrets and conflicting emotions on the star’s drawn worried-looking face. But her lover is a mere archetype — she doesn’t even have a name — whose humanity is unimportant enough that eventually (spoiler alert) she disappears from the narrative without a trace. One might think she was some sort of hallucination if she and Xia didn’t hook up eventually in a stranger’s hotel room.
That scene is spoiled by some unnecessary transmisogyny, as the women ransack the aforementioned stranger’s room after accosting “him” for being “in the wrong bathroom.” There, they discover a hidden cache of women’s clothing, which they regard with skepticism and mockery. That moment tips the viewing experience into discomfort and confusion rather than the dreamy turn-on “Green Night” is aspiring to be. It’s not an unbearable film, but it’s not a particularly consequential one either, despite the boldness of its themes. In this case, a star’s big comeback comes not with a bang but a whimper.
