Close to You

近在咫尺

Taiwan/Hong Kong/China, 2010, colour, 1.85:1, 103 mins.

Director: Cheng Xiaoze 程孝泽.

Rating: 6/10.

Formulaic but effective tearjerker about two young boxers and the women in their lives.

STORY

Taibei, the present day. Cocky young Zhao Zijie (Peng Yuyan) is the star fighter of a university boxing club that is threatened with demolition unless it can raise its profile. The club is managed by Ding (Luo Bei’an) and his younger daughter Ding Xiaokui (Guo Caijie), who is secretly in love with Zhao Zijie. Due to a broken arm when younger, Zhao Zijie has never realised his promise and would like to win a major bout to please his grandfather (Wang Jue), a former national boxing champion, who is in hospital dying of cancer. Ding Xiaokui’s elder sister, Ding Xiaoling (Yang Zishan), is studying the violin but feels she hasn’t got what it takes to become a pro, and would rather be a singer-guitarist. Also majoring at the same college is a gifted violinist from Beijing, Chi Shanshan (Yuan Xinyu), who is rescued from some hoodlums one night by Chen Jiaxiang (Ming Dao), a onetime talented boxer studying in Beijing who lost his memory in a car crash and has since returned to Taiwan to start a new life. Chi Shanshan takes an immediate liking to him and finally persuades him to join the boxing club to help both it and Zhao Zijie. However, Chen Jiaxiang still suffers from heavy headaches, and Zhao Zijie does not immediately welcome his presence at the club.

REVIEW

Released around Chinese Valentine’s Day, and seemingly made solely for an audience of pubescent teenage girls, Close to You 近在咫尺 juggles a large number of entirely unoriginal elements with initially exasperating but finally effective skill. Though the dialogue seems to have been written by a computer, several of the performances are intensely annoying, and the whole lexicon of Asian Melodrama Cliches is shamelessly raided (including amnesia, cancer, repressed love, and a finale set to Tchaikovsky), the elements do manage to click into place when required. As in his likeably entertaining debut, the kind-of-gay Miao Miao 渺渺 (2008), writer-director Cheng Xiaoze 程孝泽 – here aided by no less than five credited script consultants – manages to sustain paper-thin material through sheer technical expertise.

Starting off as a let’s-save-our-school-boxing-club story, and then veering off into a multi-stranded, boxer-with-amnesia-helps-kid-who-wants-to-prove-himself-to-grandpa drama, Close to You is so transparently formulaic that the viewer either goes with the performances or walks out. The film’s putative star, TV drama pinup/Taiwan boyband member Ming Dao 明道, is stuck in a faceless role as the amnesiac boxer and is largely eclipsed by Peng Yuyan 彭于晏 [Eddie Peng] (Hear Me 听说, 2009) as the cocky upstart. Peng’s character starts off by being gratingly superficial but later acquires some character varnish, as does the squeaky-voiced Guo Caijie 郭采洁 [Amber Kuo], here playing another romantic torch carrier (though more tomboyishly) after Au revoir Taipei 一页台北 (2010). Outclassing all three Taiwan leads, however, is China’s lynx-eyed Yuan Xinyu 苑新雨, who has the kind of remote, misty elegance that makes her superficially soppy Mainlander role bearable. The older generation doesn’t get much chance in the movie, but 92-year-old Wang Jue 王珏 brings some dignity to the dying grandfather role.

In China the original title was 近在咫尺的爱恋. The film was re-released there on 24 Jun 2016, with the English title this time changed to More Than Close.

CREDITS

Presented by Sil-Metropole Organisation (HK), Xi’an Mei Ah Culture Communication (CN), CSNCM Culture Media Group (CN), Mei Ah Entertainment Development (HK), Lumiere Motion Pictures (TW). Produced by Lion Rock Productions (HK), Harvest Films (TW), Renaissance Films (TW).

Script: Cheng Xiaoze. Story: Cheng Xiaoze, Zhang Jialu. Photography: Chen Chuqiang. Editing: Gu Xiaoyun. Music: Li Xinyun. Art direction: Wu Ruoyun. Sound: Zheng Xuzhi.

Cast: Ming Dao (Chen Jiaxiang), Peng Yuyan [Eddie Peng] (Zhao Zijie/Jay), Guo Caijie [Amber Kuo] (Ding Xiaokui/Grace), Yuan Xinyu (Chi Shanshan), Tan Junyan (Chi Junyan, Chi Shanshan’s brother), Yang Zishan (Ding Xiaoling), Wang Jue (Zhao Zijie’s grandfather), Luo Bei’an (Ding, boxing-club trainer), Yang Mingwei (Xiaogui), Gu Degang (Dahu), Guo Zhishu (Shaoguo), Li Lie (Chen Jiaxiang’s mother), Wang Xi (Xu, doctor), A Xin [Wu Yuetian] (sympathetic talent judge), Zheng Fenfen, Zhang Jialu (other talent judges), Wei Shumin (jazz-pub owner), Zheng Youjie (Biao, barman), Cai Xinsi (bar owner), Ding Haofeng (boxing referee), Cai Liyun (boxing-club member).

Release: Taiwan, 13 Aug 2010; Hong Kong, 13 Aug 2010; China, 13 Aug 2010.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 19 Jan 2011.)