Enjoy Yourself

祝你幸福

China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 111 mins.

Director: Kang Bo 康博.

Rating: 6/10.

Relationship-cum-legal drama sports some good performances but is hampered by a messily constructed screenplay.

STORY

A coastal city in China, 2021. After 10 years of marriage, childless couple Luo Yu (Xiao Yang), a freelance lawyer, and Bai Hui (Song Jia), a doctor in reproductive medecine, apply for a divorce. They are told by the clerk (Piao Songri) that, after the mandatory 30-day “cooling-off period”, they must come together to collect the divorce certificate exactly on the date specified; either party can revoke the application during the 30-day period, and late arrival to collect the divorce certificate will invalidate the application. Luo Yu puts his sick mother (Ding Jiali) in a care home costing RMB8,000 a month, so, after a year of not taking any cases, he agrees to a potentially complicated one. Two years ago a young couple, Qin Kewen (Liu Bate’er) and Wang Ran (Zhou Yiran), were involved in a car accident in which the husband died and Wang Ran was left in a vegetative coma; prior to the accident they had been trying for a child via IVF. Now Qin Kewen’s parents want the frozen embryo released to their care; but Wang Ran’s mother, primary school headmistress Xia Meiyun (Wu Yue), is refusing as her daughter is still technically alive. When Luo Yu discovers that Bai Hui was the couple’s primary physician, and the frozen embryo is stored at the hospital where she works, he is wary of taking on the case, even though there’s no direct conflict of interest. But he needs the money, so agrees. Qin Zhiyuan (Ni Dahong) and Yan Li (Wu Yufang), the parents of the dead man, turn out to be complete obsessives, and Luo Yu is always threatening to drop their case. Qin Zhiyuan wants to sue the hospital but Luo Yu recommends suing Wang Ran instead, thereby making it a simpler case between two families. It turns out that another reason Xia Meiyun is so passionately resisting the release of the frozen embryo is because she herself has just been diagnosed with possible cancer. During the initial court hearing, a major argument breaks out between Qin Zhiyuan and Xia Meiyun. But then a document is produced – signed earlier by both parties – agreeing that the embryo should be destroyed after a certain period. As the case proceeds it starts to impact Luo Yu and Bai Hui’s relationship, for very personal reasons.

REVIEW

In the awkwardly titled drama Enjoy Yourself 祝你幸福 (literally, “Wish You Happiness”), a couple about to divorce find their relationship affected by a court dispute in which they’re both professionally involved, he as the prosecuting lawyer and she as a hospital doctor. Well acted, especially by leads Xiao Yang 肖央 and Song Jia 宋佳, it’s the first feature by Mainland director Kang Bo 康博, 41, who graduated from Beijing Film Academy in 2013 with the short A Taste of Forest 森众, a 45-minute documentary about a community of loggers in his native province of Heilongjiang, northeast China. The faults in Enjoy Yourself are almost all down to the screenplay, by Chengdu-born writer You Xiaoying 游晓颖, that is messily constructed and takes too long to get to the point. Box office this autumn was a meh RMB60 million.

In her half-dozen-or-so features to date, You, 38, has had a checkered record – from the over-egged Love Education 相爱相亲 (2017, co-developed with Taiwan film-maker Zhang Aijia 张艾嘉 [Sylvia Chang]) and the fairly conventional high-schooler Farewell My Lad 再见，少年 (2020) to the melodramatic medical drama Ordinary Hero 平凡英雄 (2022). You’s problems have always been structure, focus and generating enough dramatic tension, and so they also are in Enjoy Yourself. Even in her best film to date, the impressive family drama (and surprise hit) Sister 我的姐姐 (2021), those problems can still be glimpsed.

Pic starts with the two leads applying for a divorce – the bureaucracy of which is patiently explained by a clerk, played by the film’s noted d.p. Piao Songri 朴松日 (The Crossing 过春天, 2018; Back to the Wharf 风平浪静, 2020; Sister; On Your Mark 了不起的老爸, 2021) – before a jumble of sequences that tries to put the broken marriage into some kind of perspective as well as introducing the main plot device of a legal battle over a young woman’s frozen embryo. It’s only around the 40-minute mark that, via flashbacks, the audience is given some understanding of the marriage behind the frozen-embryo case as well as the history of the two leads’ marriage. Details of the first marriage are never developed beyond a handful of flashbacks; but the second is gradually impacted by the continuing court case, in which the husband is the prosecuting lawyer and the wife a hospital doctor. Also involved, and further muddying the film’s dramatic focus, are the relatives battling over the frozen embryo: veteran actor Ni Dahong 倪大红 somewhat over-cooking the role of the dead husband’s emotional, uneducated father and always reliable Shanghai actress Wu Yue 吴越 (Glittering Days 万家灯火, 2009; B for Busy 爱情神话, 2021) highly focused as the vegetative wife’s calculating, educated mother who also has health issues of her own.

With no clear architecture to the screenplay, it’s difficult to become involved in any of the various dramas on offer – the about-to-be-divorced duo, the volatile father, the coolly determined mother, or the whole legal case itself. Sitting atop the whole stew, Xiao, 44, as in corruption drama Walk the Line 扫黑    决不放弃 (2024), presents a trademark mix of sad drama flecked with comedy as the freelance lawyer who needs the job (and would quite like to repair his marriage, too); alongside him, Song, also 44, a fine, understated actress too rarely in leading roles (Falling Flowers 萧红, 2012; The Poet 诗人, 2018; Back to the Wharf), is impressive as the doctor who’s not even sure she wants to repair the marriage.

Despite the strong leads, however, the film’s second half is slow going, with little new (apart from a revelation in the leads’ marriage), some nonsense about spiritual karma via balloons, and little dramatic tension. The running time could easily lose 15 minutes. Technical credits are fine, led by Piao’s typically naturalistc but good-looking widescreen images and sharp editing by Zhu Lin 朱琳 and Zhang Chong 张崇. Though the coastal city in which it’s set is unnamed, the film was shot in Shenzhen, across from Hong Kong. The Chinese title has no exclamation mark, despite being given one in many sources.

Kang has since directed his second feature, A Touch of Warm 驯鹿 (literally, “Reindeer”), a drama centred on child trafficking in the snowy forests of northeast China, starring Hu Ge 胡歌, Yan Ni 闫妮, Song, and young Taiwan actress Wen Qi 文淇.

CREDITS

Presented by Zhejiang Hengdian Film (CN), Sichuan Lian Ray Pictures (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), Tianjin Lian Ray Pictures (CN), Tianjin Zoe Pictures (CN), Horgos Excuse Me Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Lian Ray Pictures, Beijing Lian Ray Pictures (CN), Shanghai Eternal Stream Media (CN), Zhejiang Film & TV (Group) (CN), Beijing Intercontinental Brothers Film & TV Culture (CN), Beijing Weimeng Internet Technology (CN), NumeroUs Movie (Chengdu) (CN). Produced by Horgos Hefeng Qingmu Culture Communication (CN).

Script: You Xiaoying. Photography: Piao Songri. Editing: Zhu Lin, Zhang Chong. Music: Peng Fei. Art direction: Zhai Tao. Styling: Wu Lilu [Dora Ng]. Sound: Lu Ke, Wang Gang, Liu Xiaosha, Li Yang. Action: Huang Mingjian. Executive direction: Zhang Zhengquan.

Cast: Xiao Yang (Luo Yu), Song Jia (Bai Hui), Ni Dahong (Qin Zhiyuan), Wu Yue (Xia Meiyun), Wu Yufang (Yan Li, Qin Zhiyuan’s wife), Zhou Yiran (Wang Ran, Xia Meiyun’s daughter), Ding Jiali (Luo Yu’s mother), Liu Dan (Liu Jia), Liu Jun (Wei Zhengfeng), Liu Bate’er (Qin Kewen, Wang Ran’s husband), Zheng Xiyi (An’an), Piao Songri (divorce clerk), Li Guanting (Luo Yu’s assistant).

Release: China, 15 Sep 2024.