No-Sheep Zone
Writer-director Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir turns her camera on modern Mongolia in a loitering coming-of-age drama.
City of Wind
Director: Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir • Writer: Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir
Starring: Tergel Bold-Erdene, Nomin-Erdene Ariunbyamba, Anu-Ujin Tsermaa
Mongolia • 1hr 48mins
Opens Hong Kong Sep 12 • IIB
Grade: B+
What do you know about Mongolian cinema? I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably not much (apologies to the erudite). Film buffs may be familiar with Byambasuren Davaa’s Oscar-nominated The Story of the Weeping Camel, about a family of nomadic Gobi herders. They may also know her The Cave of the Yellow Dog, about a static family of herders. Point is the fetishistic world cinema stage tends to like its “exotic” film cultures to be just that. So Janchivdorj Sengedorj’s 2021 dramedy The Sales Girl, about a young Ulaanbaatar woman who takes a job working at a sex shop and learns a whole heap about gettin’ it on was a breath of fresh air. There wasn’t a sheep to be found. Sheep are rare in Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir’s feature debut City of Wind | Сэр сэр салхи too, though she does find a way for a ger – known previously as a yurt, thanks to the Russians – to be a crucial element of her thoroughly modern coming-of-age story.
Purev-Ochir has stated the idea for the film came to her when she went to see a shaman with her mother concerning a family matter. Afterwards a young dude sat down beside her – tatted up, earring, playing a phone game. That was the shaman. The idea of tradition and modernity butting up against each other isn’t new, but Purev-Ochir manages to find new cracks and crevices in an old story and in doing so goes a little way towards putting the sheep herder drama to rest. Nothing wrong with sheep herders. It’s just there’s more to Mongolia than sheep herders.
CEO or shaman, CEO or shaman?
Ze (first-timer Tergel Bold-Erdene in a Venice Orizzonti-winning performance) is a 17-year-old highschooler living with his parents (Bulgan Chuluunbat and Ganzorig Tsetsgee) and super-cranky sister Oyu (Anu-Ujin Tsermaa) on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar. He’s a good student, his teachers are convinced he’s primed for corporate greatness, and like many a nerd he gets ribbed at school for also being his community’s shaman. He’s fairly confident in his life direction until he meets Maralaa (Nomin-Erdene Ariunbyamba) at a ritual. Maralaa’s mother (Tsend-Ayush Nyamsuren) wanted a consultation ahead of her heart surgery, and all goes well. Ze assures everyone the stars are aligned the right way, but when he encounters Maralaa on the way out she calls it as she sees it, telling Ze: “You’re a fucking con artist.” Her off-handed comment, a simple digression of faiths, shakes Ze enough to send him down a very delicately rebellious road for a bit – which eventually rubs off on his classmates. He discovers girls, weed and fast bikes. Okay, he discovers girls (actually just Maralaa), club culture he feels alien in, hair dye, and the urge to push back on family obligations and expectations, despite being plugged into his community. Ze gives off a palpable love/hate vibe when he starts to wonder if he’s on the right path and Bold-Erdene does an ace job telegraphing his evolving identity.
City of Wind’s structure is built on the tension of the classic dichotomies of old/new, duty/desire, and between generations, and it’s embodied by the fundamental clash between Ze and Maralaa. He’s the old-fashioned one, happy to be so – he’s the shaman who plays mouth harp! – but lingering beneath the surface is a 21st century smart apartment dweller. She’s the city girl with a dad living and working in Korea, who’s really not down with this mystical crap – but lingering beneath the surface is a budding ger dweller who’d love nothing more than to live in the countryside with some chickens. They’re avatars for a changing Mongolia, though ones Purev-Ochir suggests can happily co-exist.
In transferring her methodically urban visuals from her two award-winning shorts (Shiluus, Snow in September) to City of Wind, Purev-Ochir effortlessly juxtaposes the city’s many contrasts with help from DOP Vasco Viana’s unfussy camera. The film’s deliberate pacing may be a bit much for some, but the gradual and steady groundwork the director lays in order for us to get a handle on contemporary Ulaanbaatar and its emerging, restless generation pays off. And it lingers; it’s the kind of film that’s a bit better the next day, and better still a week on. City of Wind also makes a good companion piece to The Monk and the Gun, in that it’s another portrait of how changing societies and the people in them reconcile deep, casual spirituality with the modern world. And the mountains kind of help. — DEK