A Little Red Flower

送你一朵小红花

China, 2020, colour, 2.35:1, 128 mins.

Director: Han Yan 韩延.

Rating: 6/10.

Fairly standard, if restrained, cancer melodrama that’s saddled with an unsympathetic main character.

STORY

A city in northern China, the present day. Two years after an operation for a brain tumour, Wei Yihang (Yi Yangqianxi), now in his late teens, is still getting hallucinations in which he sees a remote, magical lake and the indistinct features of a girl. No longer at high school, Wei Yihang has no friends his own age, and his parents struggle financially to pay for his medicines. His mother (Zhu Yuanyuan) gave up her accountancy job to look after him, and his father (Gao Yalin) is just an average office worker. Unwillingly, Wei Yihang goes along with the good intentions of Wu Xiaomei (Yue Yunpeng), who runs a wig shop opposite the hospital and who, since the death of his wife, has organised a support group for cancer patients. One day Wu Xiaomei invites him to a memorial service for Kou, a girl who was fond of cosplay. There he meets Ma Xiaoyuan (Liu Haocun), a girl his same age, who comes dressed as a frog. She’s the daughter of a wacky garage-owner (Xia Yu) and she’s very direct, unfazed by his cancer hangups; she tells him she had his level of cancer when she was five. At another Wu Xiaomei get-together, for the artist Zhang Hesong (Zhang Shaogang), Wu Yihang behaves badly and is ticked off by Ma Xiaoyuan. She later invites him to meet a friend who’s a documentary film-maker, but he again makes a scene. Nevertheless, she invites him to dinner the next day, and the two of them get on well together. His parents are secretly delighted he seems to have a girlfriend. Knowing that Wei Yihang dreams of travelling, Ma Xiaoyuan arranges for him to meet an internet celebrity adventurer, Wu Liang (Wu Xiaoliang), but again Wu Yihang fails to appreciate her efforts to stop him feeling sorry for himself and to be more positive like her. Then, during a day out with her, he sees a picture of the lake he’s been hallucinating about. After he suddenly collapses, and goes for a hospital checkup, he cuts himself off from Ma Xiaoyuan while he waits for the test results. Wu Xiaomei urges him to stop being so negative, and finally Wei Yihang patches things up with Ma Xiaoyuan. They discover where the lake actually is – in Qinghai province – and dream about visiting it together.

REVIEW

After an ill-judged but financially successful detour into the gaming/monsters/sci-fi mishmash that was Hollywood wannabe Animal World 动物世界 (2018), Shandong-born film-maker Han Yan 韩延 returns to less anonymously directed material with A Little Red Flower 送你一朵小红花. A fairly standard cancer movie starring popular Mainland boybander Yi Yangqianxi 易烊千玺 – the co-lead in hit youth drama Better Days 少年的你 (2019) – it’s proved to be Han’s biggest hit by far, the clear turn-of-the-year box-office champion that’s taken RMB1.2 billion in less than three weeks and even nudged a starry action movie like Shock Wave 2 拆弹专家2 (2020) into second place. [Final tally was RMB1.43 billion, versus Shock Wave’s RMB1.3 billion.] Despite all that, Yi is not as impressive here as he was in Better Days, largely due to a thinner script that saddles him with a self-centred millennial role that he’s hardly given a chance to redeem. Instead, the acting honours are stolen by his female co-star, Changchun-born newcomer Liu Haocun 刘浩存 – so good as the ragamuffin in One Second 一秒钟 (2020) – who, along with the older cast, gives this restrained weepie its best moments.

Han, 37, started out with several youth movies (and pseudonymously co-directing moto-racing flop Racer Legend 赛车传奇, 2011) before starting to make a mark with First Time 第一次 (2012, RMB36 million), an inventive re-working of a South Korean drama, and then consolidating his name with Go Away Mr. Tumor! 滚蛋吧！肿瘤君 (2015, RMB512 million), based on an online manga. Both of those films contained standard disease-of-the-week material that Han and his writers transformed into offbeat rom-coms, helped by lively casting. Little Red Flower – an original screenplay, with no less than five writers plus a big thankyou to Mainland scripter Zhang Ji 张冀 (Dearest 亲爱的, 2014; The Island 一出好戏, 2018) – doesn’t show such invention, though there are offbeat touches that pop up here and there.

Yi plays a boy in his late teens who had an operation for a brain tumour two years earlier and spends all his time moping around at home, with no friends his own age and suffering from occasional hallucinations of an unearthly, remote lake and a girl’s indistinct face. His parents sacrifice everything to pay for his medicines; a local guy, who lost his wife to cancer, tries to get him into his cancer-support group; and a straight-talking, kind-of-girlfriend his own age, who’s been on cancer meds almost all her life, tries to overcome his negativity. Considering his inexperience as an actor, Yi makes the best of his Me-Gen role, subtly shading his character as the script goes round in circles with every attempt by the girl ending up the same way. Only when the pair track down the lake and plan an expedition there (in the beautiful wilds of Qinghai province) does the story develop some positive momentum, with a dreamy element entering the film for the first time.

Until then, most of the film’s colour (and optimism) comes from the supporting performances, with several actors cast against type. Finally starting to lose his boyish looks, Xia Yu 夏雨, now in his mid-40s, plays the girlfriend’s eccentric but kindly father with glee, a believable parent to his equally unconventional daughter; it’s a pity the role is not more developed. Equally out of character is poe-faced comedian Yue Yunpeng 岳云鹏, 35, here in the sympathetic role of a support-group organiser whom the thankless lead forces himself to like. Yue, plus Zhu Yuanyuan 朱媛媛 (The Forest Ranger 天狗, 2006; Ocean Heaven 海洋天堂, 2010) and TV’s Gao Yalin 高亚麟 as the boy’s pushy mother and patient father, do a lot to make the film watchable, though it’s the spirited playing by the wide-eyed Liu, 20, as the no-nonsense, never-say-die girlfriend that motors the film on a more obvious level. All these performances combine to give the film an extra point it otherwise wouldn’t deserve.

The final half-hour is a much more standard cancer melodrama that, without being a full-on weepie, is much slower as Yi’s character takes precedence and a whimsical tone takes over. Overall, the film hardly justifies its two-hour-plus running time, and could lose at least 15 minutes to its benefit. Technically the picture is fine, with typically flavourful evocation of realistic settings by d.p. Zhong Rui 钟锐 (My Dear Liar 受益人, 2019; Wild Grass 荞麦疯长, 2020). Though the city in which it is set is never named, shooting took place in Qingdao, in Han’s native Shandong province, during Jun-Aug 2020.

CREDITS

Presented by Zhejiang Hengdian Film (CN), Lian Ray (Shanghai) Pictures (CN), Shanghai Ruyi Film & TV Production (CN), China Film (CN), Tencent Pictures Culture Media (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN).

Script: Han Yan, Han Jinliang, Jia Jiawei, Yu Yonggan, Li Han. Script advice: Zhang Ji. Photography: Zhong Rui. Editing: Zhu Lin. Music: Ji Yuan, Wang Na’na. End vocal: Zhao Yingjun. Art direction: Lin Mu. Styling: Zhao Yige. Sound: Wang Gang, Liu Xiao. Medical advice: Miao Zhongrong.

Cast: Yi Yangqianxi (Wei Yihang), Liu Haocun (Ma Xiaoyuan), Gao Yalin (Wei Jiang, Wei Yihang’s father), Zhu Yuanyuan (Tao Hui, Wei Yihang’s mother), Xia Yu (Ma, Ma Xiaoyuan’s father), Yue Yunpeng (Wu Xiaomei), Li Xiaochuan (Lv), Kong Lin (Liao), Wu Xiaoliang (Wu Liang), Zhang Shaogang (Zhang Hesong), Sun Qiang (Liu Tianren), An Xiaoge (Pangzi), Li Zenghui (Da Gezi), Yao Weiping (Yan), Zhang Haotian (Xu), Chai Lu (Guangzi), Chen Zhixi.

Release: China, 31 Dec 2020.