Love Doesn’t Come Easy

真爱不迟到

China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 101 mins.

Director: Ma Yong 马雍.

Rating: 4/10.

Bright and breezy millennial rom-com is let down by a scrappily constructed screenplay.

STORY

Chongqing city, central China, the present day. Now almost 30, ambitious Yang Huan’er (Cui Jingge) has a PhD, a good job at an interior design company, and a practical attitude towards marriage. At a swanky speed-dating party on a boat, she meets Xu Lei (Qiu Haoqi), but during a date with him next day finds he’s a committed celibatarian 断食男. They do, however, like each other and later she finds he works in the same building. He says he noticed her a while ago but she never seemed to give him the time of day. Yang Huan’er and her two BFFs – Qi Yufang (Liang Qian) and Li Jiazhen (He Chengxi) – celebrate their singledom: Qi Yufang has long idolised a westerner (Yuva) whom she spies on through a telescope but doesn’t want to spoil things by actually meeting, and Li Jiazhen, who owns a Japanese restaurant, regularly “auditions” suitors for fun, happy just to be friends with her cook Fu Chengjun (Li Zhixi). Yang Huan’er and Xu Lei continue to meet each other without actually dating. Meanwhile, she is bullied at work by a trio of bitchy colleagues, led by Wang Beibei (Lu Yu), though she is valued by her boss, Zhou Likai (Lin Wei). One night Qi Yufang makes contact with her idol when she finds him drunk and robbed in the street; they end up in bed together. When she tells Yang Huan’er, the latter is shocked. At the Japanese restaurant, Fu Chengjun’s criminal past catches up with him when he’s beaten up by a gang led by Hao (Zhang Hongbin); while caring for him, Li Jiazhen finds she’s in love with Fu Chengjun. But then both Fu Chengjun and the westerner suddenly disappear. And Yang Huan’er is ordered by her boss to attend a private dinner with a lascivious potential client (Wu Wen) who demands his pound of flesh.

REVIEW

A breezy rom-com centred on three Gen-90 BFFs hooked on their independence and singledom, Love Doesn’t Come Easy 真爱不迟到 has some individual moments and just about scrapes by on its lead cast, especially Shandong-born actress Cui Jingge 崔菁格 as a self-obsessed millennial who finds herself floored by an equally young celibatarian. Brightly shot in de luxe settings and costumes, and with some fine aerial nightscapes of Chongqing metropolis, it’s a likeable time-waster that’s let down by its bumpily constructed script (by Yuan Yu 芫玉, pen name of Taiwan writer Weng Meifang 翁美芳), comic-book characters and some truly unspeakable dialogue. Though it earned only a miniscule RMB91,000 at the Mainland box office, it’s still the most successful big-screen outing yet by prolific Chongqing film-maker/teacher Ma Yong 马雍, most of whose journeyman career has been in TV drama.

Beijing Film Academy graduate Cui, 26, debuted in the lead role of conventional rural romance Purple Love 一树一树紫花开 (2017) but made more of an impression in a supporting part as a wacky local in the odd-couple road movie June and Arrow 六月与弓箭 (2017), set on the border between Sichuan and Tibet provinces. In Love her character starts off as the lead one – all self-confident Gen-90er – but her plotline starts to stall as those of her two BFFs develop. It’s a cumbersome structure that’s mitigated by Cui’s confident rom-com playing – and easy chemistry with Taiwan’s Qiu Haoqi 邱昊奇 (from Ma’s earlier rom-com Flipped 怦•心跳, 2016) as the gentlemanly celibatarian – but finally torpedoed by the scrappy script. Liang Qian 梁骞 and Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 lookalike He Chengxi 何承熹 are okay as her two BFFs, and Lu Yu 卢宇 ditto as the office bitch, but its Taiwan’s Li Zhixi 李志希, whose career goes back to the 1980s (Kendo Kids 竹剑少年, 1983; Out of the Blue 小爸爸的天空, 1984; Cold 那一年我们去看雪, 1987), who cuts the most likeable and genuine presence as the chef with a criminal past.

The film’s Chinese title actually means “True Love Doesn’t Come Late”, somewhat different from the English one.

CREDITS

Presented by Chongqing Ding Sheng Film (CN).

Script: Yuan Yu [Weng Meifang]. Script supervision: Li Taiping. Photography: Wang Pingqiu. Editing: Ma Fang, Hu Juan. Music: Xi Wang. Art direction: Ling Wenqing. Costumes: Luo Qi. Styling: Wu Jing. Da Vinci toning: Hu Xiaojuan. Sound: Liu Xixing. Special effects: Juan Zi. Executive direction: Zhao Bin, Li Shen.

Cast: Cui Jingge (Yang Huan’er), Qiu Haoqi (Xu Lei), Li Zhixi (Fu Chengjun), He Chengxi (Li Jiazhen), Liang Qian (Qi Yufang), Wu Wen (Huang Chengli/Charles), Lu Yu (Wang Beibei, bitchy trio leader), Mou Na (Chen Hongying), Lin Wei (Zhou Likai, Yang Huan’er’s boss), Yuva (Qi Yufang’s foreign idol), Ge Ziyang (Jiang Zhimei), Huang Jueya (Wei Yudu), Liu Bin (Chen Junkai), Zhang Hongbing (Hao, gang head).

Release: China, 20 May 2019.