Back to Love

带你去见我妈

China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 100 mins.

Director: Lan Hongchun 蓝鸿春.

Rating: 6/10.

Second dialect feature by Chaozhou director Lan Hongchun has the same easygoing style and smalltown family background.

STORY

Shantou city, Guangdong province, coastal southern China, the present day. Xian (Zhong Shaoxian) runs a sidestreet duck-meat shop; at home she shares a house with her retired husband (Zheng Pengsheng), her younger son (Huang Gengzhou), and her elderly mother (Lian Yingzhu). Her elder son, Zheng Zekai (Zheng Runqi), lives in Shenzhen, some 300 kilometres to the south, where he works in a warehouse business with his maternal uncle (Lian Xilong). Unknown to his mother, Zheng Zekai has been dating Lu Jingshan (Lu Shan), a commercials director, for two years, and the pair are living together. Lu Jingshan is recently divorced and originally from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, not from Shantou. Thinking her son is still single, Xian has arranged a “blind date” for him through a matchmaker; when she arrives at his office, he has to disabuse the chubby Huang Keke (Huang Pingfen) that he’s not available. One evening, stuck in a traffic jam, Zheng Zekai proposes to Li Jinghshan and says he wants to have children; they make an appointment with a wedding registrar for the 19th of the following month. Meanwhile, she agrees to meet his family en route to both of them going to Hangzhou, for her to see her father and attend a friend’s wedding. During the family’s welcome dinner in Shantou, Lu Jingshan says her father is a teacher and she herself works in “self-media” planning. All of the family welcome her, apart from Zheng Zekai’s mother, who later tells him he should marry a Shantou girl, not only becasue it’s traditional but also because she and his grandmother can only speak the local Chaoshan dialect, not standard Mandarin. Zheng Zekai, who is still keeping the fact that Lu Jingshan is a divorcee, tells his mother to wait a few days and see how she feels about Lu Jingshan then. Lu Jingshan already realises the mother doesn’t like her, especially as she keeps referring to her as “the outsider” 外省. During the next couple of days, Lu Jingshan meets more of Zheng Zekai’s family, including his elder, married sister (Lu Minmin) with whom she gets on well. The mother keeps sniping at her in Chaoshan dialect, which Lu Jingshan doesn’t understand. Relations appear to improve a little, and Zheng Zekai finally plans to tell his mother about Lu Jingshan being a divorcee. But just before he open his mouth, his mother announces she wants to accompany the two of them on their trip to Hangzhou.

REVIEW

Family tensions once more fuel the second feature of Chaozhou director Lan Hongchun 蓝鸿春 – again working with lead actor/co-writer Zheng Runqi 郑润奇 – as a traditional smalltown mother opposes her eldest son’s engagement to an out-of-town divorcee. Back to Love 带你去见我妈 – whose Chinese title translates as the less soppy “Take You to See My Mum” – is, like the duo’s previous light drama Proud of Me 爸，我一定行的 (2018), a rare outing in the Chaoshan 潮汕 dialect as well as being beautifully cast with non-pro players and technically proficient way beyond its modest budget. Released just prior to the CNY heavy-hitters, it took only half (RMB24 million) of the previous film’s amount but is in several respects a better balanced production overall.

With a widely dispersed community in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, Chaozhou [Teochew] people – from the northeast, coastal corner of Guangdong province – were once served by a mini-industry in Hong Kong that made over 70 dialect movies during the first half of the 1960s. So far, Lan, 36, has become almost a one-man industry for reviving the dialect in PRC films, with both this and Proud of Me (plus the online movie Love and Swatou 𬶍•恋, 2012, on which he was creative producer 监制) featuring about 80% of the dialogue in the Chaoshan sub-dialect spoken in his native Shantou city. (Despite technically being part of Guangdong province, Chaozhou-nese doesn’t sound anything like Cantonese; instead, it’s close to Hokkien, spoken across the border in Fujian province and in Taiwan.)

Despite bringing an authentic flavour to the film, the use of Chaoshan dialect also becomes a plot point. The mother not only objects to her son courting a non-Chaozhou girl (who’s from Hangzhou, two provinces north, and speaks standard Mandarin) but also points out that she and the girl can’t even understand each other, as she’s never learned Mandarin and the girl can only speak a few words of Chaoshan dialect. But that’s only the start of the problem: the major issue is that he keeps putting off telling her that his fiancee is also a divorcee.

The blend of light comedy and drama is very similar to that in Proud of Me, but smoother and without the occasional wacky moments (enjoyable as they were) that unbalanced the first film. Again, the basic material is conventional but elevated by its treatment; and the inevitable acceptance by the mother of the status quo (which hasn’t been a problem for the rest of the family) is dealt with in a charming way that disguises the generic outcome.

Zheng makes a likeable, lightly comic lead and is well-partnered by Lu Shan 卢珊 as his strong-minded fiancee, Zhong Shaoxian 钟少贤 as the stubborn mum, and Zheng Pengsheng 郑鹏生 (the father in Proud of Me) as the quiet but open-minded dad. Lian Yingzhu 连映珠 is especially witty as the outspoken, free-thinking granny. All of the cast are, again, non-professionals or friends, but the ensemble is very natural. Good-looking but unforced photography by Hai Tao 海涛 and the pleasant score by Li Yihan 李奕瀚 and Wu Zehua 吴泽华 – all regulars – are part-and-parcel of the whole package.

CREDITS

Presented by Shenzhen Yuguang Film Industry (CN), Shenzhen Dream Catcher Culture Communication (CN), Shenzhen CYCAS Picture (CN). Produced by Shenzhen Tikesi Culture Media (CN), Chengdu Mingde Yifengshang Culture Media (CN), Shenzhen Xingzhe Film & TV Media (CN).

Script: Zheng Runqi, Lan Hongchun, Yang Leng, Guo Hongyi. Photography: Hai Tao. Editing: Lan Hongchun. Music: Li Yihan, Wu Zehua. Music supervision: Li Yihan. Art direction: Xu Peng, Ma Lin. Styling: Chen Anqi, Peng Qinghong. Sound: Zhong Shangkui, Zhang Shuo. Artistic supervision: Tian Dingkang. Executive direction: Yang Leng.

Cast: Zheng Runqi (Zheng Zekai), Zhong Shaoxian (Xian, Zheng Zekai’s mother), Lu Shan (Lu Jingshan), Zheng Pengsheng (Zheng Zekai’s father), Lian Yingzhu (Zheng Zekai’s grandmother), Lu Minmin (Zheng Zekai’s elder sister), Huang Gengzhou (Zheng Zekai’s younger brother), Lian Xilong (Zheng Zekai’s maternal uncle), Zhang Yiru (daughter of Zheng Zekai’s sister), Li Shuhao (fortune-teller), Zheng Huisong (Red Hair), Fan Chanzhen (Chanzhen, buck-toothed woman), Hu Hongcai (photographer), Lian Rongze (apprentice), Fan Jiawei (photographer), Lan Wenlong (uncle), Liang Biwen (uncle’s younger daughter), Laura (uncle’s older daughter), Madina Diomande (maternal uncle’s black girlfriend), Zheng Weiquan (driver), Huang Pingfen (Huang Keke, Zheng Zekai’s “blind date”).

Release: China, 7 Jan 2022.