Now I Met Her

我的妈耶

China, 2026, colour, 2.35:1, 120 mins.

Director: Xiao Luxi 肖麓西.

Rating: 7/10.

Basically generic coming-of-ager is raised a notch by some clever flourishes and especially by actress Ma Sichun’s textured performance.

STORY

Lianhai, a city in Guangdong province, southern China, c. 2024. Teenager Zhang Shiyi (Huang Minghao) has an edgy relationship with his loving father Zhang Yongxun (Bai Ke), who raised him alone after losing his wife, Li Dongyu (Ma Sichun). On his 18th birthday, after his father has left for work, Zhang Shiyi discovers his mother’s secret diary and eventually sits down to read it. (In 1982, when only five, Li Dongyu [Zhao Ziqi] had idolised her show-off father, Li Dacheng [Zhang Zixian]; but one day he had been arrested for “financial crimes”, had been imprisoned, and soon died.) (In 1993, when starting senior high school, Li Dongyu [Ma Sichun] had found herself in the same class as Liu Pihai [Wang Tianfang], a young hoodlum from her neighbourhood who’d called her father a “murderer” when he had been arrested in the street. She had ended up sharing a desk with Wang Caixia [Ji Jiahe], a big, fat, ugly girl who never spoke, had no friends and was also epileptic. However, Wang Caixia had turned out to be a fearless warrior when one night she defended Li Dongyu against Liu Pihai’s bullying, and the two girls had become close friends. Meanwhile, Li Dongyu had fallen for a male student [Liang Jingkang] who was crazy over disco music and wanted to emulate Hong Kong actor/singer Guo Fucheng [Aaron Kwok] in breakdancing. To get his attention, she had entered the same dance contest, after getting coaching from the eccentric Ning Chaoyang [Wang Hai], who had won the last contest. However, when she had learned the winner would get invited to Shenzhen, and she might never see him again, she had withdrawn from the contest, instead helping him to win from behind the scenes. He had thanked her profusely and then left by train for Shenzhen. In 1996, Li Dongyu and Wang Caixia both graduated from high school: Wang Caixia had moved with her parents to the US, while Li Dongyu had entered a university in Guangzhou, leaving behind her mother [Ding Ziling] to continue running the family videostore in Lianhai. In 1998, at a karaoke bar, she had met and fallen for a waiter [Sun Yang] and later helped him run his street business when he was sacked from the karaoke bar. However, after becoming involved with a smuggling ring, he had been fined and given two years’ imprisonment.) After arriving back from work, Zhang Yongxun has to pop out again to check the factory where he works, because of an approaching typhoon. (In 2002, Li Dongyu had been working at a trading company in Shenzhen when she met Zhang Yongxun and agreed to see a film with him. But when her mother suddenly had a stroke, she had to rush back home to Lianhai, leaving her job and Zhang Yongxun behind. One day, however, he had turned up unannounced in Lianhai and stayed with her. In 2005 they had married and opened a noodle restaurant in her hometown. She had become pregnant, but one day had collapsed at work.) At this point the diary Zhang Shiyi is reading suddenly ends. But then he finds a special present that his father left for him before going out. It helps to explain everything about the mother whom Zhang Shiyi never knew, and why he was named Shiyi 十一 (“Eleven”).

REVIEW

Part growing-up yarn, part long-limbed love story, Now I Met Her 我的妈耶 is a mixture of the conventional and unconventional that is very messy at a script level with its ever-shifting focus but manages to remain watchable across two hours. That’s thanks to a tour-de-force performance by always interesting Mainland actress Ma Sichun 马思纯, returning to the big screen after a couple of years’ absence, plus very smooth direction by film-maker Xiao Luxi 肖麓西, 32, in her first feature, that’s infused with a love of old Chinese movies and performances that engage the camera. It took only a ho-hum RMB77 million at the spring box office but marks Xiao out as someone to watch.

Born in Dalian, northern China, Xiao first directed the 26-minute psychological drama Pulse 溃疡 (2019), shot in English and set in Orlando, US, and centred on a mother coping with both her husband’s death and her teenage son’s gay relationship with his swimming trainer. More recently she directed the slick-looking 19-part mini-drama Dear Passenger 亲爱的乘客, 你好！ (2023), centred on a night driver in Beijing. Now I Met Her was mentored by director Ning Hao 宁浩 via his production company Dirty Monkeys, with Ning, who has a history of encouraging young talent, credited as creative producer 监制. Reportedly, the film grew out of parental issues dealt with in Pulse as well as Xiao’s relationship with her own mother, a free, unconventional spirit who’s never let her role compromise her own happiness.

The light tone is set from the start, with working-class father Zhang Yongxun (comic actor Bai Ke 白客) and his 18-year-old son Zhang Shiyi whom he’s raised on his own since his wife’s long-ago death. Zhang Shiyi (literally, “Eleven Zhang”, a weird name explained only at the end) is a moody, mildly rebellious teen chafing against his father’s love; but everything is about to change when he discovers his late mother’s secret diary while his dad is out at work. As the diary springs to life, the film then becomes a growing-up movie centred on the wife/mother, Li Dongyu (Ma), starting in 1982 as a five-year-old who idolised her show-off father, through her teenage years at high school, to university and afterwards, finally marrying Zhang Yongxun. It’s a structure familiar from scores of Mainland movies, here given a fresh spin only by Ma’s performance (in her first truly comedic role) as the irrepressible Li Dongyu who bounces from one apparent setback to another with hardly a blink.

Though the film occasionally returns to the present, as Zhang Shiyi reads the diary, it’s essentially one long flashback in which Li Dongyu is the main character. When it returns to the present for good near the end, and tries to recalibrate the relationship between father and son in light of what the latter has learned about his mother, it doesn’t really succeed in shifting the emotional goalposts yet again. What it does do, however – through a clever twist that explains some earlier casting choices – is to enrich the mother and father’s love story, which was much longer and deeper than the viewer had been led to believe. And in another unconventional move, the script – by Wu Fuli 吴扶俐 [Aubrey Lee], a producer at Dirty Monkeys, Zhang Yuxin 张宇欣, also in her first major script credit, and Xiao herself – gently plays with time, especially in the latter stages as Li Dongyu dreams of a future life with the son she’s just given birth to.

These flourishes – as well as an obvious love of old movies, from kung-fu to musicals – hardly disguise the generic flavour of much of the film, nor the melodramatic cliches that surface in the final 30 minutes. But thanks to Ma’s textured, immensely likeable performance – a little reminiscent at times of actress Ma Li 马丽 – the final section is strangely moving, despite the movie’s obvious faults. The niece of actress Jiang Wenli 蒋雯丽 (Lan 我们天上见, 2009), Anhui-born Ma, now 38, started as a child actress but has been turning in notable performances for a decade or more (The Left Ear 左耳, 2015; SoulMate 七月与安生, 2016; The Shadow Play 风中有朵雨做的云, 2018) but this one is up there in scope and depth with that in the equally long-limbed yarn Somewhere Winter 大约在冬季 (2019). Her chemistry with Bai Ke is also immediately noticeable when he enters the story in a major way around the 70-minute mark.

Among the supporting cast, singer/actress/videographer Ji Jiahe 嵇嘉禾 (aka Chuina Lisha 锤娜丽莎/Trina Lisa) is both funny and touching as Li Dongyu’s over-sized high-school BFF and Liang Jingkang 梁靖康 entertaining as a breakdance-mad student. Technically the film is very smooth, with the widescreen photography by AFI graduate Liu Zilong 刘子龙 always at the service of the cast. The only weakness is the score by young Nanjing composer Shang Qi Chaoran 尚戚超然, which becomes very soupy in the final half-hour. The film was largely shot in Foshan, Guangdong province, in 2024. What its Chinglishy title means is anybody’s guess; the original Chinese one roughly means “Oh, My Mother” (like “Oh, My God!”).

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Dirty Monkeys Culture & Media (CN), Shanghai Huace Film (CN). Produced by Hainan Dirty Monkeys Pictures (CN).

Script: Wu Fuli [Aubrey Lee], Zhang Yuxin, Xiao Luxi. Photography: Liu Zilong. Editing: Yue Bowei. Music: Shang Qi Chaoran. Art direction: Zhang Lili. Costumes: Qian Guanyang. Styling: Yu Xiaoxi. Sound: Zhang Zhenyu. Action: Wei Yuhai.

Cast: Ma Sichun (Li Dongyu), Bai Ke (Zhang Yongxun), Huang Minghao (Zhang Shiyi/Eleven), Sun Yang (Li Dongyu’s boyfriend during university), Liang Jingkang (high-school breakdancer), Zhang Zixian (Li Dacheng), Kong Lianshun (Liu), Ji Jiahe [Chuina Lisha/Trina Lisa] (Wang Caixia), Wang Tianfang (Liu Pihai), Lei Songran (Liu Hao), Guo Hong (Cheng, female doctor), Wang Hai (Ning Chaoyang), Zhao Ziqi (young Li Dongyu), Ma Xudong (breakdance competition MC), Ding Ziling (Li Dongyu’s mother).

Premiere: Rotterdam Film Festival (Big Screen Competition), 2 Feb 2026.

Release: China, 3 Apr 2026.