Young Style

青春派

China, 2013, colour, 2.35:1, 92 mins.

Director: Liu Jie 刘杰.

Rating: 8/10.

Beautifully crafted, high-school charmer redefines writer-director Liu Jie.

STORY

Beijing, 2011. Five days before sitting the University Entrance Exam, Ju Ran (Dong Zijian), 16, falls and hurts himself while climbing out of a window to see his dream girl, fellow student Huang Jingjing (An Jing), 18, for whom he’s held a torch for the past three years. (At the high school’s group photo session, Ju Ran had openly declared his love for Huang Jingjing and the two had walked away together, only to be stopped in the street by his mother, Li Wenli [Yong Mei].) For several years, Ju Ran has lived with his mother, for whom passing the exam means everything; he rarely sees his father (Jiao Gang), who lives in the suburbs. When Huang Jingjing dumps Ju Ran for being spineless, and he then fails the exam, his mother is furious. Ju Ran returns to the high school to re-sit the exam, his only goal being to get into the same institution – Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University – as Huang Jingjing. With 330 days to go, he finds himself back in the same class, with the same head teacher Sa (Qin Hailu), and re-meets a female classmate who’s always liked him, Sun Xiaofan (Qie Lutong). Ju Ran falls in with a gang – leader Jia Di (Jiang Xueming) who also likes Xiaofan, bespectacled Qi Mingzhi (Tan Chufeng), the girly Li Fei (Gao Haoyuan) and Zhou Qiang (Li Tianhao) – for whom he becomes a “love guru”, an expert on women. Ju Ran meets Huang Jingjing when she briefly revisits the school as an honorary graduate, and she tells him she’ll re-assess their relationship if and when he makes it to Fudan University. In the meantime, she says he’s free to date other girls. Ju Ran throws himslf into his studies but, as the countdown to the exam continues, he has to face one after another obstacle in his school, family and love lives.

REVIEW

After establishing his name on the festival circuit with three features of varying artiness, d.p.-turned-director Liu Jie 刘杰 comes up with the beautifully crafted, utterly charming Young Style 青春派, a high school-cum-first love movie centred on the need to pass the University Entrance Exam 高考 as a gateway to life in modern, competitive China. Though the film has no major stars to make much of a dent in today’s Mainland market, and compared with Japan, Taiwan and South Korea the high-school movie is still a relatively recent genre in China, Liu makes the characters and formulaic situations seem fresh on the screen, packing a whole universe into a tight hour-and-a-half and anchoring the film with a terrific performance by experienced actress Qin Hailu 秦海璐 as the students’ hard-arsed head teacher.

Young Style proves yet again that Liu is a film-maker who’s difficult to pigeonhole. As a d.p. his work ranged from several movies for director Wang Xiaoshuai 王小帅 (including the under-rated and hardly known Dream House 梦幻田园, 1999, the sunny Beijing Bicycle 十七岁的单车, 2000, the downbeat Drifters 二弟, 2003) to the bright A High Sky Summer 王首先的夏天 (2001). As a director, he began with the lively but monotonous rural drama Courthouse on Horseback 马背上的法庭 (2006), switched to the city with the grey but finally rewarding legal-procedural drama Judge 透析 (2009), and then returned south to Yunnan provice with the choppy Beyond the Clouds 碧罗雪山 (2010), which couldn’t decide whether it was an ethnic-minority documentary or a dramatic feature.

What’s new about Young Style is not only its more accessible approach but also the greater confidence Liu shows in handling the material. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been seen in scores of other Asian high-school movies (japey students, concerned parents, strict teachers, first-love pains), but it’s played and orchestrated – as well as tightly edited by Taiwan veteran Liao Qingsong 廖庆松 and Mainlander Gao Shan 高山 (Harpoon 惊魂游戏, 2011) – with utter assurance, pulling off the hardest trick of maintaining an ensemble feel without losing the focus on the lead character, teenage Ju Ran.

On the acting side, there isn’t a weak link in the casting. The always reliable Qin (Durian Durian 榴莲飘飘, 2000; The Piano in a Factory 钢的琴, 2010) binds the movie together with her portrait of a tough teacher who just wants her unruly brood to realise how important the exam is to their future, moving from a routine object of authority to one who gets a moving speech near the end. Other adults, including Yong Mei 咏梅 and Jiao Gang 焦剛 as Ju Ran’s feuding mother and father, also grow beyond family sterotypes as the film progresses. Providing the string section of the cast, however, is the remarkable collection of new young talent: Dong Zijian 董子健 as the sparky, lovelorn Ju Ran, An Jing 安静 (aka An Yuexi 安悦溪) as the pretty, duplicitous Huang Jingjing, and especially Qie Lutong 郄路通 as Ju Ran’s classmate Sun Xiaofan, who quietly holds as big a torch for him as Ju Ran does for Huang Jingjing.

Between all the classroom pranks and playing around – including a very funny sequence in which the boys think they can detect a “virgin’s fragrance” and a charming, wordless sequence when Ju Ran pursues Huang Jingjing onto the high-speed train to Shanghai – the emotional undertow is provided by the audience’s desire for Ju Ran to wake up, forget Huang Jingjing and take up with Sun Xiaofan. Here, as with Qin’s teacher and Dong’s Ju Ran, the script doesn’t necessarily go the obvious route.

The film’s original title means “Youth Style” or “The Way of Youth”. Though Young Style is the English title on the print, it premiered at the Shanghai festival under the rather better English title From Summer to Summer. Chinese titles during production were 对你说 (“Told You”) and then 不需要初恋的夏天 (“Summer without First Love”). Maybe as a tip of the hat to the film’s Taiwan input (editor, sound), veteran Taiwan director Hou Xiaoxian 侯孝贤 cameos at the end as a teacher.

CREDITS

Produced by Hubei Huanggang Broadcasting & Digital Media (CN), China Film (CN), Hubei Fareast Excellent Movie (CN).

Script: Liu Jie, Gao Shan, Zhu Zhu, Tian Xiaowei. Photography: Zhang Hao. Editing: Liao Qingsong, Gao Shan. Music: Jiang Han. Art direction: Zhang Jianlin, Ye Guangzhen. Sound: Du Duzhi.

Cast: Dong Zijian (Ju Ran), Qin Hailu (Sa, teacher), Yong Mei (Li Wenli, Ju Ran’s mother), Jiao Gang (Ju Ran’s father), Qie Lutong (Sun Xiaofan), An Jing (Huang Jingjing), Jiang Xueming (Jia Di), Tan Chufeng (Qi Mingzhi), Gao Haoyuan (Li Fei), Li Tianhao (Zhou Qiang), Jiang Xiaohan (replacement teacher), Long Ran (Qin Ci), Hou Xiaoxian (teacher at end), Yue Dai.

Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Focus China), 20 Jun 2013

Release: China, 2 Aug 2013.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 2 Jul 2013.)