Chinese filmmaker Rongfei Guo found light in the darkness during her time in lockdown at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her film Girl With a Thermal Gun recently played at the Tribeca Film Festival and, in fact, won the award for Best Narrative Short. Girl With a Thermal Gun is a musical that features more dancing than dialogue and tells the story of a delivery man who falls in love with the girl who takes his temperature each time he enters the supermarket.
Interestingly, although her love of musicals is clear in our email interview below, it was documentary that Rongfei majored in at NYU. Of course, that wasn’t an obstacle: “My studies at NYU didn’t really inform my approach to the musical genre, but it gave me a sense of how to tell a riveting story,” she says.
Indeed, Girl With a Thermal Gun is a ray of light at a time when our world is continuously darkened by political and social division, pandemic devastation, and and climate-related destruction. Rongfei’s film is a reminder that even when all hope seems to be lost, we must continue dancing and singing.
I’d like to start by commending you on your film! On top of being such a well-crafted film about a very topical issue, it was an immense joy to watch. Where did the idea for the film come from? What made you decide to make it a musical?
Thanks a lot. I’ve always had a strong interest in the musical genre. I’ve always felt that musical films with dance capture larger-than-life emotions. It is naturally suited for exploring characters’ inner lives. During Covid-19, I was quarantined in my room for a long time alone and the whole city was locked down. I didn’t know what the future would be like and the feeling of fear emerged. One day when I was walking in a supermarket, I felt that the supermarket was just like a metaphor of a family, from vegetables, bed sheets to napkins… This made me feel lonelier at that time. When I saw people wearing masks and keeping themselves socially distanced, I felt so depressed and really wanted to burst into songs and dances even just for one minute. Then I came up with this idea — a musical film about a delivery man who falls in love with a girl with a thermal gun. The fantasy uplifted him in dark times, and it uplifted me as well.
Although it highlights the ways in which our daily lives have been affected by the global pandemic, the film feels, to me, fundamentally like a celebration of life: it’s set in an everyday environment and stars everyday characters, and the musical structure of it really brings out the beauty and grandeur of the ordinary. Particularly at the end, when Li Chao’s character goes on dancing, it feels like a message of hope and perseverance. What are you hoping audiences will feel or take away from watching Girl with a Thermal Gun?
Yes, exactly. I wanted to make the story a great escape from the cruel reality. I wanted him to dance in the hallway until the end because he knows that as soon as he steps outside the building, he’ll be back to a boring life of routine with masks and social distancing. That dance is the last fantasy he can keep before getting back to reality. But I do want to say that the process of building up the fantasy is just as meaningful as our actual day-to-day life.
Would you talk about the logistics of filming choreography in a supermarket? Were there any challenges that you faced during production, and how did you overcome them?
So, it is a real supermarket and we could only film after it closed. Thus, we had four consecutive nights of shooting. This was a nightmare because the whole crew was really exhausted. And in the morning at 7 a.m., we needed to wrap. But I am so thrilled that I got to film in a supermarket because the whole place gave us so much inspiration. It is the best stage for singing and dancing! Especially for the choreographer, he was thrilled during scouting and came up with more ideas there and then we decided to change some plot points.
You studied at NYU, where you majored in documentary. Here, you’ve made a musical! How did your studies inform your approach to making a musical? Additionally, how did studying film in America inform or change the way you see Chinese stories and issues?
It is an amazing shift, from the most realistic place to the most surreal one. After I graduated, I made many documentaries in China, which I enjoyed a lot. In my documentaries, I always tried to mix some fiction in the story to blur the boundaries of reality. I also made some documentary films related to dance and music and the whole filmmaking process was so eye-opening to me.
My studies at NYU didn’t really inform my approach to the musical genre, but it gave me a sense of how to tell a riveting story. And the methodology I learned there applied to all genres, no matter if it is a serious social issue documentary, a horror film or a glamorous musical. Studying in America also made me pay attention to the eternal value that I can express through a Chinese story. Maybe it is also because in America I had to pitch to some people who have limited knowledge of China, so I always remind myself that my story needs to break the cultural boundary and deliver something universal in order to touch the deep nature of humans.
The previous presidential administration spurred a very xenophobic narrative about the coronavirus and its origins, so much so that reported hate crimes against Asian people have skyrocketed since 2020. As a Chinese director bringing a Chinese film to American film festivals, is this something you think about? worry about? Does it give you an added urgency to share your stories?
When I was making the film, there weren’t many hate crimes at that time so I didn’t think about it until the post-production. I did have the concern and sadness to see the news of hate crimes, not only for my film, but also because I lived in the U.S. for many years and I love it there so much. But after the film was selected into the Tribeca Film Festival, I got a phone call from the committee and they said they liked the film because it is something we all want for a pandemic story. And then it won the Best Narrative Award which makes me more confident about it. Just like what I said before, I always want to explore a universal value through a story. No matter if you are a delivery man or a billionaire, no matter where you live, we all shared the same fear and loneliness during the pandemic. It was such a strange world and you couldn’t really know what was going to happen next. And I am glad that it is a musical film because dance and music don’t have that boundary. No one resists dance and songs. I really like the saying from Bob Fosse: “The time to sing is when your emotional level is too high to just speak any more, and the time to dance is when your emotions are just too strong to only sing about how you feel.” We all had so many emotions stuck in our bodies during lockdown and it’s important to just let the art help us escape from reality for just a few minutes. This is also why Chloe Zhao inspires me. I feel imperative to tell the universal value of love and loss, beauty and hope through my eyes especially in a time of hatred.
What’s next for you?
After this musical, I became more addicted to musicals and now I am developing my first musical feature-length film Dear Red. Dear Red is a story about my search for my mom, and for myself. Because I have never known who my mother was for 30 years. I was making Girl With a Thermal Gun and at the same time first knew her name and started to write some letters to her. The musical feature is about my fantasy of my mom. This story is also about confronting the trauma brought by our families and childhoods, and our struggle to reconcile with ourselves. The film script was selected by Cinéfondation Residence of Cannes Film Festival and I am living in Paris to finish the script and hopefully you will see this family drama musical film in 2023.
