Dodging the abyss

Han Han, who's better known as a writer and a car racer, works on his second directorial film Duckweed, which opens on Jan 28, the Lunar New Year.[Photo by Li Yiyao/For China Daily]

Han Han wears many hats: influential blogger, popular writer, race-car champion and film director. As his second feature film opens, the former wunderkind talks to Raymond Zhou about his fears and ambitions.

Han Han has the habit of giving a totally different English translation to the Chinese title of his feature film.

For his directorial debut, he insisted on Continent while the Chinese title is literally No Date for Next Meeting, because he wanted to convey the cross-continental journey the main characters took in the road-trip movie. His second film is called Duckweed in English, but the Chinese is the more uplifting Sailing with Full Wind and Breaking Waves, which is catchy but more or less a cliche. It opens on Jan 28, the Lunar New Year.

Han excels in the art of symbolism. He can say one thing and suggest something else. Maybe it comes from his skill as a multitasker - he made his name from writing, but he seems to have more passion for race-car driving. When his 2014 Continent grossed 628.8 million yuan ($92 million), his status as a filmmaker was firmly established.

But Han brushes aside the so-called writer-turned-director category, saying that it does not take a degree in a film school to be a director but it does take a huge amount of preparation. He traces his training back to the time when he made music videos for an album of pop songs he released a decade ago. (Yes, he dabbled in music as well, but not as successfully as his other endeavors.)

Han is not comfortable being mentioned in the same breath as Guo Jingming and Zhang Jiajia, two other writers-turned-directors, who are about his age and with similar commercial success. He explains he has not seen their 2016 releases yet, but he is confident his own movies "are not stinkers", a complaint the moviegoing public often lobs at his two rivals.

At the height of his writing fame, Han was one of the most influential commentators on a wide range of topics, including films. His swipe at movies like Zhang Yimou's A Noodle Story was legendary. Now that he has entered the same profession, he said he will refrain from doing that. The production designer from Duckweed is the same one who did the Zhang comedy, "which I believe could have been much better".

Han has mellowed, which may or may not be welcomed by his fans. Continent does not have a strong narrative, but it is packed with pithy and sarcastic lines that audiences loved. He reveals that he sometimes built the plot around these "golden sentences", but he has since changed his priority. In Duckweed, the verbal wit does not come as strong, but the comedy is more situational.

"I do not like low comedy," he says. "I want the audience to take away something more than laughter from my movie. I want them to identify with the characters the stars play rather than be focused on the stars themselves."