Forever Love

阿嬤的梦中情人

Taiwan, 2013, colour, 2.35:1, 124 mins.

Directors: Xiao Lixiu 萧力修, Kitamura Toyoharu 北村丰晴.

Rating: 7/10.

Pleasant, nostalgic look at the local-dialect film world in late 1960s Taiwan.

STORY

Taibei, spring 2013. Xiaojie (Li Yijie) visits her 70-year-grandfather, Liu Qisheng (Long Shaohua), in hospital after he fell off his bike after cycling round the island. As a young man in the late 1960s, Liu Qisheng (Lan Zhenglong) was the hottest scriptwriter in the local Hokkien-dialect section of the film industry, sometimes working on seven scripts simultaneously and employed by Xiao Zhigao (Liao Jun) at his studio Chih Kao Pictures in Beitou, a northern suburb of Taibei. Xiaojie grew up watching films in a cinema, the Hollywood Theatre, that Liu Qisheng owned later in life. His wife, Jiang Meiyue (Shen Hairong), is now losing her mind, imagining she is Jin Yuefeng, a popular actress from the 1960s. In hospital, the aged Liu Qisheng tells Xiaojie stories from the high days of his career. Summer 1969. One of his scripts, secret-agent adventure Spy No. 7 七号间谍 premieres at the Hollywood Theatre, with Hokkien-dialect superstars Wan Baolong (Wang Bojie) and Jin Yuefeng (Tian Xin) in attendance. Liu Qisheng first meets the young Jiang Meiyue (An Xinya) – a huge fan of Wan Baolong since the hit melodrama I Love You to My Bones 爱你入骨, which Liu Qisheng wrote – as she tries to sneak in without a ticket. Liu Qisheng later re-meets her when she attends auditions held by the studio, and helps her get a part in the follow-up production, Spy No. 7 on Monster Island 七号间谍续集之勇闯怪兽岛. When aged director Li Jiu (Chen Bingnan) dies during production, Liu Qisheng is asked to take over by his boss, and he revises the script into “a romantic espionage fantasy epic”, Spy No. 7: On the Moon for Love 七号间谍续集之为爱奔月, with Jiang Meiyue taking on the lead female role when Jin Yuefeng goes AWOL in a tiff. Liu Qisheng and Jiang Meiyue fall in love, but the days of Hokkien-dialect movies are already numbered as the government decrees that all films should henceforth be made in the Mandarin dialect.

REVIEW

A playful, well-mounted slice of nostalgia – for the glory days of local, Hokkien-dialect quickies made on Taiwan during the 1950s and 1960s – Forever Love 阿嬤的梦中情人 taps into the island’s local identity in the same way as Hong Kong’s current retro wave, proclaiming cultural individuality at a time when the Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan are gradually melding into a “Greater China”. With the majority of the dialogue in Hokkien – a dialect brought over from, and still spoken in, southern Fujian province that the island likes to call “Taiwanese” – the film proclaims its local identity simply on a linguistic level, like so many recent productions. But with its period, movie-world setting, Love has a way less parochial feel than many contemporary Taiwan movies and is more accessible. Though it’s at least 15-20 minutes too long, with too much tarrying in the final stages, it has an ingenuous charm that makes it an easy, if not especially involving, ride.

Between 1956 and 1981, around 1,000 Hokkien movies were released – of which some 200 are preserved today by Chinese Taipei Film Archive – before being totally wiped out by the KMT government’s imposition of Mandarin as the island’s official language. Though bookended by a rather unnecessary modern story, Love is largely set in 1969, when Hokkien cinema’s golden age was already on the wane but still capable of packing a neighbourhood cinema with young fans of its stars. The script, by first-timer Lin Zhenhao 林真豪 from an original story by Wang Liwen 王莉雯 (Jump Ashin! 翻滚吧！阿信, 2011, plus the daughter in the very local black comedy Seven Days in Heaven 父后七日, 2010), has a lot of fun with screaming fans, posturing stars, creaky old cinemas with tinny sound systems, and the generally cheesy production values of most Hokkien cinema.

It’s all played at a slightly exaggerated level, one notch down from pratfall farce, with veteran actor-presenter Liao Jun 廖峻 (the cussing father in The Soul of Bread 爱的面包魂, 2012) leading the charge as a seedy, money-driven producer. As the central character of a young writer cranking out scripts, actor-model Lan Zhenglong 蓝正龙 (Night Market Hero 鸡排英雄, 2011) tries hard but is largely overshadowed on a personality level by the surrounding cast, including Wang Bojie 王柏杰 (Winds of September 九降风, 2008) as an egotistical matinee idol, actress Tian Xin 天心 (Woman Soup 女汤, 1999; Catch 国士无双, 2006) back on screen after seven years as his high-maintenance screen partner, and An Xinya 安心亚 (Westgate Tango 西门町, 2012) as the writer’s wannabe-actress amorata. Though she has an annoyingly squeaky voice, 27-year-old An, who shot to fame as a nude model four years ago, does have a ditzy screen presence that’s just right for the part, and throws herself into the role of a low-talent wannabe with an engaging sense of fun. Co-director Kitamura Toyoharu 北村丰晴, a Taibei-based Japanese actor-director-restaurateur (Love You Ten Thousand Years 爱你一万年, 2010) who was also in Westgate Tango, pops up here as a goofy art director.

To its credit, the film doesn’t make any overt statements about Hokkien cinema’s expression of local values and culture, and its battle vs. “official” Mandarin (imported by the KMT from the Mainland). The message is clear enough to anyone who wants to find it, and Love hardly makes a case, either, for the artistic value of Hokkien cinema which, rather like Hong Kong’s Cantonese cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, was cheaply made, disposable product, with “prestige” film-making largely in Mandarin. (Clips from real b&w movies are included in the end credits.) Overall, the film simply draws attention to a now-forgotten era of Taiwan cinema for a gentle exercise in nostalgia.

Lin’s script is unnecessarily complicated in its early set-up, and diffuses the viewer’s emotions over too many characters; it’s at its best in the scenes of movie-making and those pairing Lan and An’s characters, rather than in the modern sequences which show Lan’s character as an old man with a different set of characters to relate to. Period art direction and costuming look filmy but brightly reflect the movie’s cartoonish style; classical music excerpts (Ravel, Richard Strauss, etc) are used well. As in Hong Kong-set nostalgia item Echoes of the Rainbow 岁月神偷 (2010), 1969 is designated as the key year in which Man first stood on the Moon and one way of life started to give way to another.

The film’s bland English title is also shared by the Mainland rom-com Forever Love 201314 (2013), directed by Kong Lingchen 孔令晨 and released only a few weeks earlier. The original Chinese title means “Mum’s Dream Lover”.

CREDITS

Presented by Taipei Postproduction (TW), Arrow Cinematic Group (TW), Pomi International (TW), Greener Grass Production (TW).

Script: Lin Zhenhao. Original story: Wang Liwen. Photography: Zhou Yixian. Editing: Liao Mingyi. Music: Li Mingjie. Art direction: Wang Zhicheng. Costumes: Xu Liwen. Sound: Tang Xiangzhu, Du Duzhi. Special effects: Su Wenwang. Visual effects: Zheng Zhihong, Huang Hanqi. Action: Zheng Tongcun. Choreography: Zheng Tongcun. Creative advice: Zhuang Jingshen, Zeng Hanxian. Taiwan cinema advice: Cai Yangming.

Cast: Lan Zhenglong (young Liu Qisheng), An Xinya (young Jiang Meiyue), Wang Bojie (Wan Baolong), Tian Xin (Jin Yuefeng), Long Shaohua (old Liu Qisheng), Shen Hairong (old Jiang Meiyue), Liao Jun (Xiao Zhigao/Mr. Pig, studio head), Peng Peng (Peng), Kitamura Toyoharu (Heilun, Japanese art director), Hou Yanxi (Baiqi, studio runner), Chen Bingnan (Li Jiu, director), Li Yijie (Xiaojie, Liu Qisheng’s grand-daughter), Huang Caiyi (Aimei, Liu Qisheng’s daughter), Hu Tingting (Hua Mulan; teacher; interviewer), OneTwoFree [Ziyou Fahui] (MCs), Lin Zhiru (cinema owner), Kato Yuki (interviewer), Deng Anning (restaurant owner), Xiaotiantian [Zhang Keyun] (reporter).

Release: Taiwan, 27 Feb 2013.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 29 Mar 2013.)