Gift from a Cloud
有朵云像你
China, 2025, colour, 2.35:1, 119 mins.
Director: Yao Tingting 姚婷婷.
Rating: 5/10.
Light drama about a husband who reappears, with amnesia, in the life of his family has two good leads but a way over-long script that’s increasingly nonsensical.
STORY
Somewhere in Hangzhou province, eastern China, Apr 2023. Voice actress Xiao Fan (Wang Ziwen) and her young son Lele (Chen Tingyu) move into a house in the countryside designed by Qin Tian (Qu Chuxiao), Xiao Fan’s husband and Lele’s father who’s been missing for some time. Qin Tian had promised to “come back” when the first rains fell next season – and now, as it’s April, Lele keeps asking his mother when his father will reappear. When the rains finally start, Lele runs outside to wait for his father by a small bridge. Xiao Fan has pre-prepared a gift from Qin Tian to Lele to keep the boy happy; but to her great surprise a man who looks exactly like Qin Tian turns up, and she faints. He checks out physically in every detail (even including a scar on his back) but says he can’t remember anything, even who he is, as he just woke up in the woods nearby. Embarassed, he sleeps on his own in his workroom that night. Next day, while Xiao Fan is at work, he finds the original plans for the house, digs up a box in the garden with a key inside, and meets two elderly neighbours (Niu Ben, Wang Yanshu) who are surprised to see him alive. That evening, after a dinner that he expertly cooks, Xiao Fan shows him various mementos. (In 2008, in senior high school, Xiao Fan [He Landou] had first spotted Qin Tian [Huang Yi], but he seemed not to notice her. Nothing further had happened until they were both in a camping group after sitting the gaokao [university entrance exam]. They had promised to meet at a small bridge, exactly a year later, and she was surprised when he had turned up.) When an old school friend, Bao Yuan (Wang Hao), drops by the house, Qin Tian doesn’t recognise him until Xiao Fan returns from work. Bai Yuan is especially surprised as Qin Tian was legally declared dead a while ago when he didn’t return from a trip. (In 2014 Qin Tian, already working as an architect, had accompanied Xiao Fan to an acting audition.) While visiting a former haunt to try to jog his memory, Qin Tian and Xiao Fan finally shared a kiss. Later, under the floor of his workroom, Qin Tian finds a box with a large handwritten diary inside. He then discovers a stash of documents hidden by Xiao Fan under her bed that includes his death certificate. He says nothing to Xiao Fan. Next day he asks Bai Yuan to show him his grave. When Bai Yuan says he was present the whole time from his friend’s cremation to burial, Qin Tian asks him, “So who am I?” He tells Bai Yuan that, when the rainy season ends, he’ll leave and not return. But then Xiao Fan discovers that Qin Tian has found her secret stash of documents and knows everything.
REVIEW
Third time, alas, is not the charm for Shenyang-born writer-director Yao Tingting 姚婷婷, 39, following the high-school coming-of-age drama Yesterday Once More 谁的青春不迷茫 (2016) and time-bending romance Love You Forever 我在时间尽头等你 (2020). Despite being utterly generic, both were raised at least a notch by Yao’s light touch and her likeable leads, and delivered emotionally at the end. Gift from a Cloud 有朵云像你 has similarly generic roots, and two good leads, but what starts as an intriguing mystery with a touch of fantasy – a husband, now with amnesia, suddenly reappears in the life of his wife and young son – becomes increasingly convoluted and ridiculous in its second half, losing the audience’s sympathy and hardly justifying the two-hour running time. After the surprise success of Forever (a very nice RMB500 million), Gift only managed to scrape a tenth of that amount (RMB51.6 million) at last summer’s Mainland box office.
Like Yao’s previous two features, this one is also adapted from a novel – Be with You いま、会いにゆきます by Japan’s Ichikawa Takuji 市川拓司 published in 2003. It was quickly adapted into a 2004 Japanese box-office hit, directed by Doi Nobuhiro 土井裕泰 and starring Takeuchi Yuko 竹内結子 as the wife and Nakamura Shido 中村獅童 as the husband, and was later remade successfully in South Korea, again using the English title Be with You 지금 만나러 갑니다 (2018), directed by Yi Jang-hun 이장훈 | 李章焄 and starring actress Son Ye-jin 손예진 | 孙艺珍 and actor So Ji-seob 소지섭 | 苏志燮.
The major difference from the novel (and previous film versions) introduced by Yao and her co-writers – Pu Xian 浦贤 (Forever), Chen Nan 陈楠, and no less than eight other script consultants, co-ordinators and assistants – is that it’s the husband who mysteriously returns, not the wife. This alters the film’s main dynamic into one in which the young son reconnects with his missing father rather than his missing mother, though in other respects the adaptation roughly follows the novel. The first hour is enjoyable, thanks to the bright, clean widescreen photography by Yao’s regular d.p., Zhou Wencao 周文操 (who also did sterling work on period student drama Only the Wind Knows 那一场呼啸而过的青春, 2017, and body-swap comedy Five Hundred Miles 交换人生, 2023), a smooth, lyrical score by Taiwan-born Varqa Buehrer 贝尔 (Better Days 少年的你, 2019; Beyond the Clouds 我本是高山, 2023) that helps bind disparate scenes together, and especially by the good chemistry between the two Sichuan-born leads.
Qu Chuxiao 屈楚萧, 31, rose to fame as the rebellious son in sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth 流浪地球 (2019) but here mines the same quiet charm he showed in youth romance Love Will Tear Us Apart 我要我们在一起 (2021). Wang Ziwen 王子文, 39 but looking a decade younger, has had a longer career and is more often seen on TV, but she continues to do some notable work on the big screen without actually becoming a major star (Fall in Love 爱神, 2013; Dream of Eternity 晴雅集, 2020; Awakening Spring 温柔壳, 2023). She’s excellent here as the mother who makes a living as a voice actress and shows endless patience with her spoiled brat of a son.
Yao has turned the story into more of a strung-out tease, feeding the audience only scraps of information about the husband’s past (and what exactly happened to him), as well as keeping the exact timeline very vague. It’s almost an hour into the film – and after the first of several flashbacks to the couple’s romantic history that began in high school 15 years earlier – before the viewer is told that the husband was legally declared dead several years ago. It’s in the second hour that the movie starts to jump the tracks, starting with the husband’s discovery of a handwritten diary, as well as his wife’s hidden stash of documents that includes his death certificate. Hereon the screenplay becomes increasingly chaotic and ridiculous, with a fantastical edge that includes much talk of coming from and going to the clouds (the film’s Chinese title means “There’s a Cloud That Looks Like You”). By then even the valiant performances of Qu and Wang can’t rescue the whole mess.
Veteran actors Niu Ben 牛犇 and Wu Yanshu 吴彦姝 pop up now and then as sympathetic neighbours, Wang Hao 王皓 is okay as an old school friend who was close to the husband, and young actress He Landou 何蓝逗, 26, is impressive, as always (My Best Summer 最好的我们, 2019; Behind the Blue Eyes 不能流泪的悲伤, 2023), in brief flashbacks to the wife as a teenager. But the film’s final half-hour becomes a real test of the viewer’s patience as it throws in some mild twists and becomes more and more nonsensical with its “explanation”. A more sensible running time would have been around 90 minutes, but that still wouldn’t have solved the screenplay’s inherent faults.
CREDITS
Presented by Ruyi Film (Hangzhou) (CN), Wanda Pictures (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Zhejiang Hengdian Film (CN), Joyful Today (Beijing) Pictures (CN), Ningbo Cheer For Fun Culture Media (CN). Produced by Ruyi Film (Hangzhou) (CN), Joyful Today (Beijing) Pictures (CN).
Script: Pu Xian, Yao Tingting, Chen Nan. Novel: Ichikawa Takuji. Photography: Zhou Wencao. Editing: Tan Xiangyuan. Music: Varqa Buehrer. Art direction: Li Yading. Styling: Fu Lei. Sound: Wang Yanwei, Xiao Baohua. Action: Wang Chenming. Visual effects: Li Geng, Liu Yiqi. Executive direction: Lu Xiao.
Cast: Qu Chuxiao (Qin Tian), Wang Ziwen (Xiao Fan), Wang Hao (Bai Yuan), He Landou (teenage Xiao Fan), Huang Yi (teenage Qin Tian), Chen Tingyu (Lele), Wu Yanshu (Qi Guiyun, elderly female neighbour), Niu Ben (Tang Wanliang, elderly male neighbour), Guo Xingyu (teenage Bai Yuan), Qin Yu (Dingding), Zhang Chi (Dahua), Lv Xiaoyu (Le, teacher), Pang Bo (Dali), Yu Jiacheng (adult Lele).
Release: China, 29 Aug 2025.