Early in his career Eddie Peng visited Cannes film festival on the promotional trail for Jump Ashin!, a true-life gymnastics movie directed by Lin Yu-Hsien. It was 2011. The Taiwan-born actor and singer vowed to work hard enough to return as a red-carpet contender.
He subsequently visited the Croisette as the star of Love After Love, a historical drama from the Hong Kong auteur Ann Hui. Last May Peng triumphantly headlined Black Dog, the winner of the festival’s Un Certain Regard programme and the recipient of the Palm Dog Grand Jury award.
“Coming back to Cannes with Black Dog, I feel like I have manifested a dream,” says Peng. “It’s been quite an amazing, crazy ride along with my new favourite actress, Xin, who won the Palm Dog. It takes hours to fly from Mekong to Cannes. And then she wins. What a journey. What can I say? We are lucky stars.”
Black Dog is an irresistible drama about a former convict returning to the Gobi Desert village where he grew up. Peng’s character, Lang, a taciturn former motorbike stunt performer, is tasked with clearing the northwestern town of its many stray dogs ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Public enemy number one is the snappy mongrel of the title, which is rumoured to have rabies. Following several failed attempts to catch it, the hardened temporary dog warden bonds with the undomesticated animal. Their firm friendship is a touching constant in a wild frontier town.
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It’s a hugely demanding role for the former pop star: almost wordless, physically demanding and requiring motorbike stunts.
“If I’m going to do something, I feel I owe it to the character to understand him,” says Peng. “It has to look like I am living this man’s life. I think everyone has a dark side, or we all have moments when we don’t want to talk, right? We all have times when you are forced to talk a lot because you are in a group or a certain environment. And sometimes there’s something you don’t want to say. When I first read the script, it was during the pandemic. I was at home, spending more time with my family. It was a different way of living. I had time to think about transforming into this character, building the backstory, and to think about making him authentic to the Gansu area, which was a place I’d never been.”
Black Dog’s director, Guan Hu, emerged in the early 1990s as one of the leading talents of the Sixth Generation, the gritty indie school of film-making that defined itself against visually elaborate, historical costume films of Fifth Generation practitioners such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. Hu has subsequently graduated to such epic pictures as The Eight Hundred, his eight-years-in-the-making, $415-million-grossing war film, but retains an interest in scrappy characters, small towns and animals. “Human beings all have an animal side to them,” says the director.
Hu’s early absurdist comedy Cow concerned the care of that ruminant during the second Sino-Japanese war. A white horse is a reference for the soldiers in The Eight Hundred. An ostrich appears in the crime drama Mr Six. Black Dog, similarly, feels as feral as the beast of the title. Animals, including zoo animals and the many slithering residents of a snake farm, feature throughout. Packs of dogs, including the leading lady, Xin, roam freely. Scene partners, notes Peng, were not always ready for a close-up.
“We had 200, 300, sometimes 400 dogs on set every day,” the actor says. “Outside of that, we had 40 or 50 trainers. We actually built a big training camp for the dogs and trainers beforehand. After all this preliminary work, we needed to get together and work on the chemistry with the dogs. Before shooting, especially with Xin, every day I started spending a few hours with her. I had to make sure she could really trust me.
“I remember there were a lot of reshoots. There was one continuous shot that we were working on for 20 days. Just to get one take. You can see it at the beginning of the movie. We’re waiting for a particular day and the right sunlight and for Xin. After 20 days I was watching, thinking: come on, come on, girl. You can do this! I didn’t know if I was acting any more. I was just in the moment, willing her on.”
The nonhuman cast is matched – for wildness, at least – by the forbidding environment. During the opening scenes a bus flips over in the gusts that characterise the world’s sixth-largest desert. The Gobi residents are unfazed. During one magical, scroll-like sequence, people and animals watch a solar eclipse against the expanse of the Qilian mountains.
“I think It would have been impossible to create a movie set like this,” says Peng. “The Gobi landscape was spectacular and also desolate. It felt experimental. Like the place truly allowed us to immerse ourselves in the story. There’s really bad reception. So you can’t check out and scroll to see what your friends are doing. We had to focus on the craft and get on with creating the movie.”
Peng has been a household name in Asia for two decades. After growing up in Canada, he was spotted by a talent scout on a family visit to Tapei in 2002. His earliest roles were in live-action anime adaptations and teen romances. He has proved his worth as an action hero in the Oscar-shortlisted cycling drama To the Fore and as an undercover cop in Operation Mekong.
“I did a lot of student romances at the start,” he says. “And I just figured I wanted to do something else. When there was a possibility to do action, I took it. I went to the gym, did MMA, martial arts, and changed my physique. And now I’ve worked with Ann Hui and Guan Hu. That’s work I can really focus on.”
I love that the dogs are extremely happy and then, all of a sudden, they drop down and sleep. It makes me wonder: what the heck are we doing as human beings?
Black Dog was an opportunity to work with not one but two great Chinese directors. One of Peng’s scene partners is the Cannes favourite Jia Zhangke. The director of Mountains May Depart and Ash Is Purest White plays the official who oversees the local dog-capturing team.
“It blew my mind,” says Peng. “I got to work with two of the most meticulous, fantastic directors on one film. I think all directors can really act. I was totally convinced by his performance. I’d watch him in the corner, rehearsing every line. And I thought: I need to work really hard.”
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Offscreen there were several happy endings. During production Xin and Peng developed such a close bond that the actor opted to give a forever home to the greyhound cross and two of her canine costars. It has been the best learning curve, says Peng.
“Look at me,” he says, over our Zoom call. “I look like a normal dog walker! Now, every morning I have to walk. I walk three times a day since I adopted Xin and the two puppies from the movie. We go hiking. We go to the beach. The puppies are three years old, because we shot this movie three years ago. And the famous black dog is four.
“They have changed my whole family. The dynamic of our relationships have changed. My sister and my mum used to be scared of dogs. But the dogs have made us more grounded. They give you unconditional love and they taught me a lot of things. When I am away for a few weeks of work and return, it’s an event for them. Even if I’m gone five minutes, it’s like I’ve been away for three years, and you have the most joyful moment.
“I love that the dogs are extremely happy and then, all of a sudden, they drop down and sleep. It makes me wonder: what the heck are we doing as human beings? We’re all so pretentious. I’m pretending to be somebody else at work. But they are always truthful. When I’m hanging out with them, I don’t worry about the future or what’s coming next. I just enjoy the moment.”
Black Dog opens in cinemas on Friday, August 30th
