The Italian Recipe

遇见你之后

China/Italy/Germany, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 100 mins.

Director: Hou Zuxin 侯祖辛.

Rating: 7/10.

Corny, generic rom-com set in Rome is boosted by smooth packaging and a lively cast, topped by actress Huang Yao.

STORY

Rome, Oct 2020. Wannabe idol singer Peng Boyang (Liu Xun) arrives in Rome, with his manager Peter (Wu Yingzhe) and his assistant Xiaoqi (Hu Haofan), to take part in a reality TV series in which he’ll be teamed with well-known actress Lisha (Fu Mei) as his romantic partner. The previous evening the hotel’s driver, Antonio (Romano Reggiani), had asked his friend Huang Manman (Huang Yao) to take his place and pick up Peng Boyang at the airport, as he was busy arranging the reception for his forthcoming wedding. Huang Manman, who’s lived in Italy since the age of 12 with her maternal uncle (Li Xiaochuan) and his wife (Fan Wenfang) and daughter (Chen Leyi), and is about to sit a big law exam in four days’ time, agrees but oversleeps and arrives late at the airport. Thinking she is a real driver, Peter later makes an official complaint to the hotel. At the hotel, Peng Boyang meets Lisha, who’s more famous than him and is using the show – in which the two of them supposedly fall in love in Rome – to re-brand her career. Fed up after the launch party, Peng Boyang wanders around the city and ends up drunk in the backstreet where Huang Manman lives at her uncle’s dry-cleaning business. She takes him in from the rain and he passes out on her bed, sparking all sorts of questions from her relatives. She drives him back to his hotel on her scooter but first delivers a bridal dress to Antonio, who’s already been sacked by the hotel. More chaos ensues, with Peng Boyang accidentally destroying Antonio’s wedding cake. Meanwhile, Peter has been panicking over Peng Boyang’s disappearance; he tries to involve the police but they’re more interested in watching a football match between Italy and Germany on TV. Angry with Peng Boyang for ruining Antonio’s life, Huang Manman takes him to a restaurant where she works part-time as a kitchen dogsbody and the two work through the night making a replacement wedding cake. As they get to know each other, she confesses how she really wants to study under a famous Italian chef rather than become a lawyer and he confesses how he’d rather be a songwriter than trying to be an idol singer, with all the pointless business that involves. What Huang Manman doesn’t know is that Peng Boyang had earlier contacted Peter and they agreed he should stay “missing” for a while longer, as his name was suddenly trending heavily on social media.

REVIEW

Audiences not looking for anything original, and just want a by-the-numbers rom-com in a glamorous foreign location, will find The Italian Recipe 遇见你之后 a satisfying meal. An unlikely romance between a wannabe Mainland pop singer and a Chinese law student who lives in Rome, it’s utterly generic, slickly mounted, and motored by a colourful cast led by Guangdong-born actress Huang Yao 黄尧, 27, in only her second lead performance in a theatrical feature after her remarkable turn in coming-of-age drama The Crossing 过春天 (2018). Though it only took a meh RMB16.5 million on Mainland release, the majority China/Italy co-production is a quality time-waster (with a few twists) that also packs a moderate emotional punch at the end.

Based on an original story, Un amore a Roma, by Italian writer-director Alberto Simone (Moon Shadow Colpo di luna, 1995), it’s the directorial debut of Beijing-born Hou Zuxin 侯祖辛, 34, a former singer who studied sociology and journalism in Hong Kong and film-making at USC in the US. The daughter of musician Hou Muren 侯牧人 (b. Shanghai, 1952), she previously directed two short documentaries, Rock On, 20 40 60 摇滚在二十，四十，六十岁 (2014) and My Dad’s a Rocker 老摇滚 (2015), both featuring her father, a pioneer of Mainland rock music. Though Recipe is not short on soundtrack songs, they’re more middle-of-the-road, in line with the film’s mainstream sensibilities; but the movie as a whole has the same technical finesse and emotional content she brought to the moving portrait of her stroke-felled father in Rocker.

Though bookended by brief sequences in Beijing, 90% of the movie is set in Rome, with the widescreen photography by Sarajevo-born, Italy-based d.p. Vladan Radović (The Traitor Il traditore, 2019) painting a real but mellow portrait of the Italian capital that’s neither aggressively touristic nor off-puttingly grungy. With equally smooth editing and scoring, the screenplay by Hou Zuxin, producer Cristiano Bortone (who’s worked before with Radović), romantic novelist Yu Si 余思 and Simone himself hums along on familiar lines as the second-grade idol singer and his flamboyantly camp manager (Wu Yingzhe 吴英哲, from Beijing comedy troupe Mahua FunAge 开心麻花) arrive to shoot a fake reality show with a preening, better-known actress (Fu Mei 付美, 28, good). Eventually he’s thrown together with a law student who’s grown up in the city but secretly wants to study under a famous chef (celebrity cook Antonino Cannavacciuolo, seen only on a poster).

There are a couple of small twists in the script that make the film more than just formulaic fodder, but it’s the performances that matter most, with even Singaporean veteran Fan Wenfang 范文芳 [Fann Wong] buried in the cast as the girl’s aunt and Li Xiaochuan 李晓川 (Kora 转山, 2011; Soul Snatcher 赤狐书生, 2020) also sparky as her uncle. Without grandstanding, 26-year-old Liu Xun 刘迅 (the serial lothario in Almost a Comedy 半个喜剧, 2019) is good at managing the transition from a preening wannabe to disillusioned entertainment fodder and shows some chemistry with Huang, whose natural-looking mixture of vivacity and determination powers the picture and gives it a fresh feeling even in its corniest moments. The original Chinese title means “After I Met You”.

CREDITS

Presented by Zhejiang Free Age Pictures (CN), Orisa Produzioni (IT), Beijing WD Pictures (CN), Dauphine Film (IT), Lightburst Pictures (GE).

Script: Hou Zuxin, Cristiano Bortone, Yu Si, Alberto Simone. Story: Alberto Simone. Photography: Vladan Radović. Editing: Wang Yuye, Yan Wanqing. Music: Santi Pulvirenti. Art direction: Tonino Zera, Luca Servino. Costume design: Sabrina Beretta, Meng Luyue. Sound: Huang Xun, Zhang Lei. Visual effects: Nicola Nardone.

Cast: Huang Yao (Huang Manman/Mandy), Liu Xun (Peng Boyang), Wu Yingzhe (Peter), Fu Mei (Lisha/Lisa), Hu Haofan (Xiaoqi), Liu Di (Liu, reality-show director), Li Xiaochuan (Li, Huang Manman’s uncle), Romano Reggiani (Antonio), Fan Wenfang (Huang Manman’s aunt), Chen Leyi (Wanzi, Huang Manman’s cousin), Federica Torchetti (Sara, Antonio’s bride), Wu Ye (Xiao’ai), Shi Yang Shi (Jia, sponsor), Giulio Neglia (Roberto), Wang Jinchun (Xun, star singer), Hou Zuxin (Peachy), Barbara Abbondanza (restaurant’s head chef), Andrea Venditti (taxi driver), Wang Lili (Auntie Wang), Xia Mingren (Uncle Li)

Premiere: Far East Film Festival, Udine, Italy, 22 Apr 2022.

Release: China, 3 Jun 2022; Italy, tba; Germany, tba.