Love Will Tear Us Apart

我要我们在一起

China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 103 mins.

Director: Sha Mo 沙漠.

Rating: 7/10.

Generic youth romance, from high school to adulthood, is elevated by excellent chemistry between its two leads.

STORY

Nanjing city, eastern China, 2015. Ten years after he first noticed Ling Yiyao (Zhang Jingyi) at Baipu Senior High School, Lv Qinyang (Qu Chuxiao) reminisces. (He was 17 at the time and always getting into trouble with teachers. After deciding to court Ling Yiyao, he had written her a letter, declaring “I want us to be together”. Unfortunately, a teacher, known by students as Her Majesty Yao (Wang Chunmei), had found it and Lv Qinyang had been forced to make a self-criticism in front of the whole school. During it, however, he broke the rules by naming Ling Yiyao and adding he had no regrets. That was on the 56th day of him first noticing her. She went on to university and he to vocational school. Four-and-a-quarter years later he was working as a civil engineer on a dam in Zhoushan, south of Shanghai, and she was still in Nanjing. He’d been due to return home soon but was unexpectedly injured in a storm; she had rushed to the hospital there but he was okay. She had agreed then to marry him but her mother (Chen Hongqin) had disapproved of him. Ling Yiyao had stood by him and three months later they had moved into a cheap flat together. As she was a postgraduate student at Dongnan University, he had to support her. On his current job, supervising construction of a block of luxury flats, he was kept busy making sure safety procedures were not bypassed. He’d dreamed of putting down a deposit of RMB300,000 for one of the flats, and to help save money he had started living on site. Lonely, Ling Yiyao had surprised him with a visit on New Year’s Eve 2009/10. After being pressured to sign off on a phase of the project without the proper checks, he had rebelled but found himself forced to resign. Ling Yiyao’s mother had then been hospitalised with acute pancreatitis, and the well-off Luo Tingyu (Li Jiahao), a childhood friend of Ling Yiyao whom her mother had always liked, had returned from a spell in Australia. Lv Qinyang’s best friend, Fan Guanqiao (Sun Ning), had helped him get a badly-needed job for building contractor Xu (Du Jiayi); but it had meant him getting a gang of workers together, using his own savings in advance. After a series of misfortunes, Lv Qinyang had faced bankruptcy, though he was offered a way out by Third Uncle (Pei Kuishan), who had originally got him started in Zhoushan. It had involved Lv Qinyang taking on a long-term job for Third Uncle in the wilds of Xinjiang province, northwest China, which effectively cut him off from Ling Yiyao. It was 2,000 days since he had first noticed her at high school. Then, almost four years later, he had received a call in the Xinjiang desert on his mobile phone.)

REVIEW

Even though it’s a thoroughly generic youth romance, and firmly pitched at Gen-90ers whose memories go back only 15 years, Love Will Tear Us Apart 我要我们在一起 does resonate emotionally with a wider audience thanks to excellent chemistry by its two leads (both with characterful looks) and some clever manipulation of the viewer. The first feature by Beijing-born director Sha Mo 沙漠, 31, after half-a-dozen shorts and online TVD My Huckleberry Friends 你好，旧时光 (2017), it took a very respectable RMB326 million this May, further cementing the rise of young Mainland actor Qu Chuxiao 屈楚萧 during the past couple of years.

Based on the partly autobiographical 2013 novel 与我十年长跑的女友明天要嫁人了 (literally, “The Girlfriend I Courted for 10 Years Is Marrying Tomorrow”) by Jiangsu-born Li Haibo 李海波, the screenplay, by Wang Zhiyong 王志勇 (Sha’s regular writing partner) and Fu Dandi 付丹迪, is basically one huge flashback, as Our Hero reminisces across the 10 years since he first noticed the cute Ling Yiyao at senior high and decided to court her. The main time span is 2005-15, providing opportunities to squeeze in what counts as nostalgia for millennials (cassette tapes, pre-smartphone mobiles) before the main theme takes hold: Our Hero’s promise to provide a decent life for the girl he’s fallen for (and to whom he once wrote a love letter headed “I want us to be together” – the meaning of the film’s Chinese title). This promise hits all kinds of obstacles, from his teenage waywardness through a newly-acquired probity to his misplaced trust in a friend, and up to the last minute the writers keep the audience dangling as to whether there will be a happy ending. Though the finale is ridiculously romantic, it’s actually very effective as a tear-jerker, largely thanks to the emotional capital built up by the two leads.

Sichuan-born Qu, 26, was good as the rich-kid lothario in slick youth comedy Twenty 二十岁 (2018) and okay in his breakthrough role as the rebellious son in sci-fi extravaganza The Wandering Earth 流浪地球 (2019) and as the strutting soldier in recent costume fantasy The Yinyang Master 侍神令 (2021, also produced, like Love, by Taiwan-born, Mainland-based film-maker Chen Guofu 陈国富). But here, given his greatest freedom to construct a role, Qu is on another level, with an easy charm that dovetails nicely with the quiet determination (behind an elusive front) shown by young Hunan-born actress Zhang Jingyi 张婧仪, 22, as Ling Yiyao. Shot in 2019, Love is Zhang’s feature-film debut following the online TVD Run for Young 风犬少年的天空 (2020), and it’s a strong one, with her and Qu stretching the genre’s envelope in several sequences, including one of desperate coupling when he’s at his lowest. Supporting roles are generally good, especially Sun Ning 孙宁 as the hero’s best friend.

The film loses a point for some over-generic characters and situations that strike a false note, such as the girl’s judgemental mother, some obviously shady business operators, a well-heeled childhood friend who re-appears in the girl’s life, and a bumpily developed girlfriend (played by Zhang Yao 张垚) for the hero’s best friend. Technical packaging is smooth without being glossy, with a conventional but emotionally effective score by Peng Fei 彭飞 (Lost in Russia 囧妈, 2020) and varied, unshowy widescreen photography by Liao Ni 廖拟 (The Continent 后会无期, 2014; Chongqing Hotpot 火锅英雄, 2016). The film should in no way be confused with two others with identical English titles – the very fine Mainland light drama 我想和你好好的 (2013) and the over-mannered Hong Kong trip to nowhere 天上人间 (1999).

CREDITS

Presented by CKF Pictures (Ningbo) (CN), Alibaba Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Tencent Pictures Culture Media (CN), Beijing Netease Pictures & Culture (CN).

Script: Wang Zhiyong, Fu Dandi. Novel: Li Haibo. Photography: Liao Ni. Editing: Ma Yiming, Chen Cheng. Music: Peng Fei. Theme song: Akiyame Sayuri (music), Wang Haitao (lyrics), Mo Wenwei [Karen Mok] (vocals). Art direction: Du Luxi. Styling: Huang Yu’nan. Sound: Li Danfeng. Action: Yi Hong-pyo, Hu Lifeng. Special effects: Liu Yanzeng. Visual effects: Li Zhiyong (Bud Vision). Executive direction: Ma Chuang.

Cast: Qu Chuxiao (Lv Qinyang), Zhang Jingyi (Ling Yiyao), Sun Ning (Fan Guanqiao/Daqiao), Zhang Yao (Jiang Qianqian), Liang Hao (Xiaomeng, co-worker in Zhoushan), Pei Kuishan (Third Uncle), Li Jiahao (Luo Tingyu, Ling Yiyao’s childhood friend), Zhang Zixian (Fang, foreman), Chen Hongqin (Zhu Chunhua, Ling Yiyao’s mother), Gao Zhongwei (Hu, boss), Wang Chunmei (Yao/Her Majesty Yao, high-school teacher), Du Jiayi (Xu, boss), Jin Jingcheng (Xu’s assistant), Jin Shijia (Shen, TV director), Ma Yan (Tao, boss), Zheng Xiaowan (Luo Tingyu’s mother), Wu You (Feng, foreman).

Release: China, 20 May 2021.