On April 23, the crime suspense comedy film "Nothing That Can't Be Solved by a Hotpot" held its premiere in Shanghai. Director Ding Sheng and leading actors Yu Qian and Li Jiuxiao appeared and had a post-screening meet-and-greet event with the audience.
Poster of "There's Nothing That Can't Be Solved by a Hotpot"
The film tells the story of four strangers who were dividing up the spoils in the backstage warehouse of a theater and were accidentally involved in a murder case. The special identities of the four gradually surfaced, and the truth was about to be revealed...
Director Ding Sheng said that this is a film built on characters. Each character has a different personality, but "they are intertwined and interspersed with each other. They have rivalry and none of them can be missing." Everyone in the film has two faces, and the actors constantly highlight the contrast of human nature under the dramatic conflict through exaggerated and somewhat "crazy" performances.
In the closed theater space, there are twists and turns, from burglary to murder, involving everyone's past. When talking about the original intention of creation, Ding Sheng said that this time he just wanted to tell a good story and see how far he could go with a completely original story.
The fourth to sixth people from the left in the front row are Li Jiuxiao, Yu Qian and Ding Sheng
Ding Sheng has filmed works such as "Saving Mr. Wu", "Hard Man" and "SWAT Team", and is known for his tough action scenes. In the post-screening exchange in Shanghai, when faced with the audience's question about why he did not continue his past strengths this time, Ding Sheng said that the Sichuan Opera Guan Gong's teasing line "I actually want to play a literary role" in the film is also his voice as a creator.
"When I made films before, there were a lot of outdoor scenes, big scenes, shooting, car crashes, and all kinds of fights. For this film, I gave up all my previous advantages and concentrated on telling the story in this house. This is what I have to do." Ding Sheng said, "I am actually very fascinated by storytelling. The epidemic has allowed me to calm down in the past few years. I am thinking about how to avoid repeating my past self and what possibilities I still have."
Stills from "Nothing Can't Be Solved by a Hotpot"
The film's cast is also very impressive, with Yang Mi, Yu Qian, Tian Yu, Yu Ailei, Li Jiuxiao and other five people joining forces to "join the game", making the film highly anticipated as soon as it started. The addition of Sichuan opera, mahjong, hot pot and other elements has given the film a lot of room for interpretation and viewing fun.
When asked about his collaboration with Yang Mi, Yu Qian said that they knew each other for a long time, and said that Yang Mi was "very straightforward, easy to communicate with, and a pleasure to work with." Li Jiuxiao said that he really liked the design of the lifelike atmosphere in the movie, including eating hot pot and playing mahjong, which can enhance the relationship between each other, "especially in line with the foreshadowing of what we have to do in the film, which leads to the following story."
Stills from "Nothing Can't Be Solved by a Hotpot"
At the exchange site, Yu Qian said that he has a principle for filming movies. "Before I shoot each movie, I always make a small request to the director - completely delete the crosstalk elements, and don't mix any crosstalk or crosstalk stage elements in it. It's not easy for me to portray a character. I just brought the audience into the role, and you took the person out of the role with a crosstalk element. This is a waste of actors."
Regarding the actors' performance, Ding Sheng also talked about the filming of a box-moving scene. Although the film is positioned as an absurd comedy, the film requires the actors to have a sense of reality during filming, so when moving the box containing the "corpse", the crew even stuffed a stage worker into the box and let the actor carry it.
"There's Nothing That Can't Be Solved by Hotpot" will be officially released on May 1st.
