Nuts

奇葩朵朵

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 97 mins.

Directors: Li Xin 李欣, Li Yang 李洋.

Rating: 8/10.

Top-class example of the college rom-com, with a seamless cast and technical packaging.

STORY

A city in northern China, Apr 2015. Fourth-year Beiqing Science & Engineering College 北清理工学院 room-mates Huang Jian (Zhang Ruoyun) and Xu Zicong (Li Xian) dream of going to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study under legendary professor Barton Zwiebach. Xu Zicong is a handsome, rich man’s son with a sense of privilege; Huang Jian is the cleverer of the two, full of himself, but from a poor background. The MIT professor is only accepting one student from China next year and Huang Jian is favoured; but his CV doesn’t include any membership of college societies, so he is advised by his physics professor, Dun (Jiang Chao), to improve his social skills and join some. Meanwhile, Huang Jian bumps into Zhu Zhu (Ma Sichun), a trainee on the college’s weekly news blog, who’s just been dumped by her boyfriend (Cai Lu) in the US for being so stupid. Zhu Zhu isn’t a student at the college and doesn’t even know what MIT is, and she gets into an argument with Huang Jian when he calls her thick. Looking for a story to please the chief editor (Sun Qiang), Zhu Zhu comes across a college society called Shu Yuan 淑媛社, specialising in female deportment and run by teacher Wu Jiali (Liu Mintao). Under a pseudonym, she writes an article after talking to Shu Yuan’s top student Jin Yuanyuan (Wu Youxuan), who’s only joined to snare a rich husband and already has her eyes on Xu Zicong. After unsuccessfully trying basketball, Huang Jian decides to join Shu Yuan after reading it’s full of beautiful women looking husbands. In the meantime, however, Jin Yuanyuan had led an exodus by all the beautiful women and set up the rival Ming Yuan Society 名媛社. The only women left in Shu Yuan are the geeky Qi Ran (Chen Yumi) who idolises Huang Jian despite being rejected by him, tomboy Li Si (Li Xiaoyun) who isn’t interested in men, and fat Du Xiaoyou (Yu Yan). Despite being a man, Huang Jian is allowed to join to make the numbers up to the minimum of four. But then Zhu Zhu, who’s been told by her editor to write a tasty follow-up, joins the society, which then decides to take on the glamorous Ming Yuan in the college’s talent show.

REVIEW

Shot in Tianjin in spring 2015 under the title 简单爱 (“Simple Love”) but released only three years later – when it promptly flopped with a mere RMB30 million – Nuts 奇葩朵朵 marks the return to features of Shanghai Film Studio writer-director Li Xin 李欣 after a decade’s absence. Though it didn’t click with Mainland audiences, and is “only” a college rom-com, it’s a terrific example of an over-worked genre that doesn’t have a weak link in its cast and effortlessly goes the distance at 90-odd minutes – for which alone it deserves an extra point.

Now in his late 40s, Shanghai-born Li is the son of director Li Xiepu 李歇浦 (Little Goldfish 小金鱼, 1982; Quartet on Wheels 车轮四重奏, 1985) and brother of director Li Hong 李虹 (Tutor 伴你高飞, 1999; Curse of Lola 诅咒, 2005; My Beauty Boss 我的美女老板, 2010). He’s best known overseas for Dazzling 花眼 (2002), a flashy, VFX-heavy and exhaustingly inventive tribute to the story-telling power of cinema that finally wears the viewer out with its cleverness. Li thankfully never repeated the experiment and his subsequent movies – like Zun Long 尊龙 [John Lone] vehicle Master of Everything 自娱自乐, 2004, and stock-market comedy Crazy Money & Funnymen 大话股神, 2007 – were more conventional, though always well mounted.

Though its screenplay is credited to the pseudonymous Xiaoyao 小妖 (“Little Monster”), Nuts is co-directed by Li Yang 李洋, a scriptwriter whose work includes two Chinese films for South Korean director Han Seung-hwan 한승환 | 韩承桓 (Love Finally 男得有爱, 2011; Diaries of the Cheating Hearts 擒爱记, 2012). The screenplay maintains not only a sense of structure, hardly putting a foot wrong throughout the various moods and plot turns as one thing leads to another, but also a light tone and sense of humour even in more emotional moments. The film initially pivots on the exploits of two fourth-year students as they compete for a place at the US’ Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In fact that’s just the starting point for an ensemble rom-com centred on opposites – mismatched leads, rich vs poor, glamourpusses vs nerds, and life’s so-called winners and losers. There’s no attempt to radically change the college rom-com format or introduce new stereotypes; but the whole thing is played and packaged with great charm and professionalism.

As the competition between the two roommates for the MIT place gradually recedes into the background, the real plot emerges in the odd-couple relationship between brilliant but socially challenged student Huang Jian and thick but ingenuous trainee reporter Zhu Zhu, both brought together by membership of a college society devoted to female deportment. (Don’t even ask.) Twenty-six at the time of shooting, and in what was then his film debut, TVD pin-up Zhang Ruoyun 张若昀 is surprisingly sympathetic as the genius-from-a-poor-background, and looks relaxed opposite the more experienced Ma Sichun 马思纯, then 27, as the wannabe reporter. Soon to strut her stuff as the rebellious friend in The Left Ear 左耳 (2015) and sisterly co-lead in SoulMate 七月与安生 (2016), Ma makes her role humorous without being a cliched ditz.

But as the various plot strands fan out during the second half, it’s the ensemble that really motors the movie. Especially notable are newcomer Chen Yumi 陈芋米 (then known as Chen Xiaoping 陈晓苹, under which name she’s listed in the end credits but not in the main title) as a bespectacled nerd, tomboy songstress Li Xiaoyun 李霄云 basically playing herself in her film debut, and Wu Youxuan 吴宥萱 (from Hong Kong’s Sparkling Girls SKG女团 group) as the chief glamourpuss. On the older side there’s good support from comic actor Jiang Chao 姜超 as a physics professor, TV actor Sun Qiang 孙强 as a sadistic editor, and TV actress Liu Mintao 刘敏涛 as the deportment society’s founder.

Aside from the relaxed playing, however, it’s the packaging that contributes so much. Aside from the sharp, bright photography by Jiang Tiejun 姜铁军 (The Forgotten Time 蜡笔和小新的故事, 2011; The Mask of Love 魅妆, 2012) and a snappy, often parodistic score by Jiang Yongjun 姜勇军 (Guns and Roses 黄金大劫案, 2012; No Man’s Land 无人区, 2013), it’s the crisp, on-the-beat, boom-boom editing by Zhu Lin 朱琳 (Blind Massage 推拿, 2014) that helps point up the comic timing and sense of fun. Visual effects are also pointedly used, not least in the film’s funniest joke involving a female character’s nose.

The film’s Chinese title could roughly be translated as “Exotic Blooms”. The Swan Lake section, in which the leads try to perform Dance of the Cygnets, recalls a similar sequence in campus comedy-drama Forever Young 2015 栀子花开2015 (2015), though in fact both films were shot at virtually the same time.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Film Group (CN), Shanghai Haishang Entertainment (CN).

Script: Xiaoyao. Script planning: Xu Yuanyuan, Chen Jie, Yang Fayang. Photography: Jiang Tiejun. Editing: Zhu Lin. Music: Jiang Yongjun. Art direction: Chen Zilong. Styling: Ai Wen. Sound: Sun Xiaolin, Wang Tao. Special effects: Zhang Zhipeng. Visual effects: Han Yi. Executive direction: Dai Jin, Hong Jiali.

Cast: Zhang Ruoyun (Huang Jian), Ma Sichun (Zhu Zhu), Jiang Chao (Duan, physics professor), Liu Mintao (Wu Jiali), Sun Qiang (chief editor), Wang Jinsong (bar owner), Li Xian (Xu Zicong), An Xiaoge (Shen Dong), Wu Youxuan (Jin Yuanyuan), Chen Yumi (Qi Ran), Li Xiaoyun (Li Si), Chen Long (Lu Bobo), Yu Yan (Du Xiaoyou), Pan Yanlin (basketball team leader), Sparkling Girls (Ming Yuan Society chorus), Cai Lu (Hank, Zhu Zhu’s ex-boyfriend), Wan Luobing (Hou Li), Liu Lingxia (cleaner), Zhang Hang, Liu Chunxia (canteen servers), Chen Kaixiang (male student in canteen), Fei Long (student hacker), Zheng Wanqiu (Xu Zicong’s mother), Liu Yining (hospital nurse), Sun Xiaolin (supermarket cashier), Hei Zi (Zhu Zhu’s neighbour), Shao Wenjun (basketball team leader’s girlfriend).

Release: China, 4 Apr 2018.