Better Days

少年的你

China/Hong Kong, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 135 mins.

Director: Zeng Guoxiang 曾国祥 [Derek Tsang].

Rating: 7/10.

Tragic love story between two young outsiders gains traction from its setting against high-school bullying and exam pressures.

STORY

Qingteng English Training Centre, somewhere in China, 2015. Chen Nian (Zhou Dongyu) is teaching a class of young people. Seeing a shy young girl who reminds her of herself, her thoughts go back four years to 2011, when she was a senior high-school pupil in Anqiao municipality, studying to sit the National University Entrance Exam 高考. One day at school, her only friend, Hu Xiaodie (Zhang Yifan), commits suicide by throwing herself into the courtyard. Among all the students busy taking pictures with their phones, Chen Nian is the only one who steps forward and covers the body. Questioned by school staff and the police, Chen Nian has little to say; privately she still feels guilty for not doing more to defend Hu Xiaodie against the bullying she was receiving from some other girls. The pressure of the approaching exam is not helped by Chen Nian’s situation at home: her loving but unrealistic mother (Wu Yue) sells underground goods and, after being harrassed at home by creditors, goes into hiding, leaving Chen Nian alone. On the way home one evening, Chen Nian sees a teenage boy, Liu Beishan (Yi Yangqianxi), being beaten up and tries to call the police; afterwards they form a wary friendship, and later on she goes back to his shack for instant noodles together. A street brawler and petty criminal, Liu Beishan still respects Chen Nian’s wishes when he sees she’s not interested in having sex. At school, Chen Nian is picked on by the same group of three girls – Luo Ting (Liu Ran), Xu Miao (Zhang Xinyi) and Wei Lai (Zhou Ye) – who had driven Hu Xiaodie to suicide. In one incident she’s thrown down some stairs. Angry at her own cowardice, and for not standing up for Hu Xiaodie, she reports the three, who are questioned by police detective Zheng Yi (Yin Fang). Even under heavy interrogation, the girls show no remorse or culpability over Chen Nian and Hu Xiaodie, and, in the lack of any hard evidence, their parents apply pressure to the school to sweep the matter under the mat. One night, in the street, the three try to attack Chen Nian with a knife; she takes refuge at Liu Beishan’s shack, where she sleeps over. Without telling Chen Nian, Liu Beishan threatens Wei Lai, who later tearfully apologises to Chen Nian, saying she just follows the other two girls. Chen Nian starts to fall for Liu Beishan and spends evenings doing homework at his shack while he’s out with his petty criminal friends. Their period of relative happiness ends when he and three friends are arrested on suspicion of rape and, separately, Chen Nian is attacked and humiliated in the street one night by the female bullies.

REVIEW

After an impressive solo directing debut with SoulMate 七月与安生 (2016), Hong Kong actor-director Zeng Guoxiang 曾国祥 [Derek Tsang], 40, keeps the bar high with Better Days 少年的你, also set in the Mainland, also starring elfin actress Zhou Dongyu 周冬雨, and also written by three of the same people. A sad love story between two young outsiders, framed within the high-pressure environment of the National University Entrance Exam, it’s about 20 minutes too long and, despite some clever editing and very strong performances, shows its genre origins a bit too often, ranking it a smidgeon below SoulMate at the end of the day. However, at a hunky RMB1.54 billion, its Mainland box office was almost 10 times that of SoulMate, thanks partly to the casting (the first major film role of popular boybander Yi Yangqianxi 易烊千玺, 19), partly to curiosity over its several delays in release, and partly because it deals frankly with several sensitive areas of contemporary Mainland life.

Popularly, Better Days has been tagged as just an exposure of school bullying; but this is only one of the pressures surrounding the film’s lead and is more a device to kickstart the main story of a cross-tracks love affair between a loner high-school student and a petty teenage criminal. School bullying has been a regular component of Mainland high-school films for some time, and finally came to the fore last year in the so-so Cry Me a Sad River 悲伤逆流成河 (2018), which billed itself as the first Mainland film to tackle the subject head-on. Like River, which was from a 2006 novel by writer-director-stylista Guo Jingming 郭敬明 (Tiny Times 小时代, 2013-15), Days is also adapted (fairly loosely) from a novel – In His Youth, In Her Beauty 少年的你，如此美丽 (aka Young and Beautiful) by Jiuyue Xi 玖月晞 (“September [or Nine Months] Dawn”), pen name of authoress Zhou Yuan 周媛. The film’s title (literally, “Teenage You”) comes from the first half of the novel’s. Originally appearing online, it was published in book form in 2016 (see cover, left).

That’s not to say Better Days isn’t a powerful portrayal of school bullying: the film opens with one girl jumping to her death and, amid all the students’ clicking smartphones, her best friend Chen Nian (Zhou) is the only one to step forward and cover the body. A taciturn loner whose single mother is in hiding from creditors, Chen Nian becomes the next target of the three girl bullies, mostly from comfy middle-class homes, and with the police unable to pin anything on the trio Chen Nian is finally driven into the arms of a teenage petty criminal (Yi) who cares for her. As their feelings for each other deepen, they’re driven to make their own private pact against the world.

All of this is staged against another regular component of high-school movies – the huge pressure (especially from parents) to pass the college entrance exam, the so-called gāokăo 高考, that’s a gateway for many to life in modern, competitive China. In recent years this was most memorably portrayed in Young Style 青春派 (2013), a beautifully crafted charmer by writer-director Liu Jie 刘杰. In Days it’s given an almost documentary flavour, heightened by the nervy editing of Zhang Yibo 张一博 (in his first major assignment) and camerawork of Taiwan indie d.p. Yu Jingping 余静萍 (Zinnia Flower 百日告别, 2015; co-d.p. on SoulMate), the latter putting her camera through the full spectrum from dreamy to gritty as the leads’ emotional landscape unfolds. Though it’s occasionally over-wrought, Zhang’s editing is one of the film’s keystones, bending time and keeping the audience on its toes even when the content is rooted in generic situations.

The film is bookended by intertitles that reference the theme of school bullying, and how the government is on the case; but equally, aside from gāokăo pressure, the movie also touches on other deep-seated problems in Mainland socciety, such as the reluctance to become involved in others’ misfortunes (another by-product of the smartphone society), casual everyday violence, and parental pressures in single-child families. As the police detectives fight against a wall of indifference from school, parents and students, all of the above problems are equal contributors to both the opening suicide and Chen Nian’s own problems.

The final section, as Chen Nian and petty criminal Liu Beishan make their own desperate pact, is the most moving of all, a portrait of two young people boxed in by a system neither can change. Zhou, 26 at time of filming but convincingly playing a few years younger, comes into her own here, shaven-headed and making the most of her sad, blank-faced, urchin looks. Good as she is here, Zhou offers nothing new as an actress; the real surprise is Yi, utterly believable as the teenage toughie and very different from his metrosexual boyband image. Among the supporting ensemble, new face Zhou Ye 周也, 21, is creepily strong as the privileged leader of the bullies, and 36-year-old actor-dancer Yin Fang 尹昉 (the songwriter in Blue Sky Bones 蓝色骨头, 2013; sniper’s spotter in Operation Red Sea 红海行动, 2018) ditto as a sympathetic detective. But it’s basically Zhou and Yi who carry the film.

Shot in summer 2018 around Chongqing, central China, the film was originally to have had its world premiere on 11 Feb 2019 in the Berlin film festival’s Generation: 14plus section; however, this was cancelled just before the festival started. Its original Mainland release, announced as 27 Jun 2019, was cancelled at the last minute. After finally being passed for exhibition, the film was released in late Oct, well clear of National Day celebrations and the gāokăo itself.

CREDITS

Presented by Henan Film & TV Production Group (CN), Shooting Pictures (Wuxi) (CN), China (Shenzhen) Wit Media (CN), Tianjin Xiron Entertainment (CN), We Pictures (HK), Kashi JQ Culture & Media (CN). Produced by Goodfellas Pictures (CN), Fat Kids (Tianjin) (CN).

Script: Lin Yongchen, Li Yuan, Xu Yimeng, Chen Nan. Novel: Jiuyue Xi. Photography: Yu Jingping. Editing: Zhang Yibo. Music: Varqa Buehrer. Art direction: Liang Honghu. Styling: Wu Lilu [Dora Ng]. Sound: Huang Zheng, Zhang Jian. Action: Huang Weihui. Visual effects: Weng Guoxian (yinyung.co).

Cast: Zhou Dongyu (Chen Nian), Yi Yangqianxi (Liu Beishan), Yin Fang (Zheng Yi, young police detective), Huang Jue (Yang, older police detective), Wu Yue (Zhou Lei, Chen Nian’s mother), Zhou Ye (Wei Lai), Zhang Yifan (Hu Xiaodie), Liu Ran (Luo Ting), Zhang Xinyi (Xu Miao), Zhang Yao (Li Xiang), Zhao Runnan (Da Kang), Gao Xuanming (Laizi), Xie Xintong (Wang Li, female police detective), Heliao Lvyun (gang leader), Xu Junzun (petty gangster), Guo Zhongyu (mobile-phone shop owner), Liao Rumeng (Xu Miao’s mother), Liu Hua (Luo Ting’s father), Wang Meixi (Wei Lai’s mother).

Release: China, 25 Oct 2019; Hong Kong, 5 Dec 2019.