Always Miss You

下一任： 前任

China/Taiwan, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 98 mins.

Directors: Chen Hongyi 陈鸿仪 (modern sequences), Qiu Haozhou 邱晧洲 (teenage sequences).

Rating: 5/10.

Strongly cast rom-com ends up being very routine, thanks to a messy script and no clear point-of-view.

STORY

Taiwan, the present day. As a child in a small seaside town, Lin Xintian grew up making predictions in the fortune-telling business of her grandfather (Chen Bozheng). She still remembers the day her father left home without a word. And then she herself got a fortune slip predicting she would never know true love. Now in her early 30s, Lin Xintian (Guo Caijie) is dating nice but boring Dai Wei (Kou Shaosi), whom she first fell for at university, and is working as a reporter at a fashion magazine, where she dispenses wisdom on relationships to her work colleagues. One day, a man walks into the office whom she recognises as Huang Kequn (Li Dongxue), her first crush back at senior high school. (When she was a student [Qiu Xinyi] at Ming’en Senior High, she fell for Huang Kequn [Wu Sixian] from afar but never declared herself to him.) After three years of dating, Lin Xintian tells Dai Wei she doesn’t love him and he was always just a substitute for Huang Kequn. After standing up to her boss (Tu Shan) in the office, Lin Xintian is sacked; on her way out of the building she watches as Huang Kequn, who is the company’s new sales manager, being effusively welcomed. (At high school, Lin Xintian was upset when another student, Li Jieru [Yao Yiqing], made an overt play for Huang Kequn.) Lin Xintian’s old high-school BFF, Guo Xiaomeng (Xie Yilin), who is now a computer programmer, promises to find her the ideal man via a reliable dating app. Lin Xintian goes on a blind date with the cocky Wu Chuan (Zheng Kai), general manager of a publishing group, and next day finds he’s also the person she has a job interview with. The two start dating, but then her vengeful ex-boss, after being put down by Wu Chuan at a swanky party, deliberately sends some nasty news to Lin Xintian.

REVIEW

Despite pulling out all her “cute” stops, Taiwan actress Guo Caijie 郭采洁 [Amber Kuo] fails to animate Always Miss You 下一任： 前任, a rom-com with ambitions a little beyond the norm which just ends up being very ordinary. Guo, 33, is always watchable, even with weak material, and her scenes with Mainland actor Zheng Kai 郑恺, also 33 and also playing to type (in his case, very cocky), hint at the sharper movie Always might have been. The film shows signs of a fraught production process – one first-time director credited with the high-school flashbacks, another first-timer with the modern scenes, separate crews shooting the two halves, multiple writing credits, and experienced Hong Kong editor Li Dongquan 李栋全 [Wenders Li] assembling the whole thing – which perhaps explains why it isn’t able to make up its mind what it is. Always is not bad; it’s just very routine. Box office in the Mainland, where it tried to hitch a ride on the Ex-File franchise with its Chinese title, was also routine (RMB121 million).

Centred on a small-town girl who grew up telling fortunes in her grandfather’s mini-temple, but who seems cursed with never finding true love, the script seems in its early stages to focus on things like people meeting each other at the wrong time or falling for the wrong person, i.e. the vicissitudes of fortune and the arrows of Cupid’s bow. A Gen-80er now in her early 30s, Lin Xintian is a reporter in the big city, dispenses relationships advice at work, but is stuck with a nice but boring boyfriend she’s clearly never going to marry. After plucking up the courage to dump him – in a funny scene that’s constantly interrupted by a traffic warden (veteran Taiwan comedienne Lin Meixiu 林美秀) – she then tries for something better while the real love of her life (from high-school days) hovers in the background.

First-time Taiwan directors Chen Hongyi 陈鸿仪 and Qiu Haozhou 邱晧洲 – the latter also credited with aerial photography! – serve up a technically smooth package but don’t seem able, despite several co-writers, to develop their central idea beyond individual sequences. And those sequences depend more on the actors’ individual personalities than the actual dialogue: for example, the blind date between Cai’s unwilling participant and Zheng’s full-of-himself yuppie makes lively viewing, but a later heart-to-heart between Cai’s character and her longtime secret love is much flatter due to the playing of Mainland TV’s Li Dongxue 李东学, poorly cast in such a role. Cai also struggles to make her character a coherent one: sometimes she’s assertive, sometimes not, sometimes she has goals, sometimes none. The philosophical ending is purely whimsical.

Supporting roles, largely played by Taiwanese, float in and out to liven things up: comedienne Xie Yilin 谢依霖 (with whom Cai starred in the Tiny Times 小时代 films) as the main character’s interfering BFF, Liu Xinyou 刘心悠 [Annie Liu] in one memorable scene as an ex-wife, Lan Xinmei 蓝心湄 as the mother to whom the main character runs for succour near the end. It’s that kind of film, totally generic but promising to be more than that at times. Technical credits are smooth, from the widescreen photography by Hong Kong’s Tan Yunjia (The Empty Hands 空手道, 2017) for the modern scenes and Taiwan’s Che Liangyi [Randy Che] (Tiny Times) for the high-school ones to the soupy scoring by Dong Gang 董刚 and Tang Jiayue 唐嘉悦.

Though the story is clearly set in Taiwan, it’s never explicitly stated and there are no defining cityscapes. Shooting was in both Taiwan and the Mainland. In Taiwan the film was released under the title 我的第一任 (literally, “My First”).

CREDITS

Presented by Wuxi Guiying Jinhua Culture Media (CN), China Youth New Power Pictures (CN), Arrow Cinematic Group (TW), Sichuan Chengcheng Film & TV Culture Communication (CN), Zhongqi Yatian Group (CN), Yiqi Pictures (Shanghai) (CN), GIMC Film Marketing (CN), YC Media (CN). Produced by Wuxi Guiying Jinhua Culture Media (CN), Arrow Cinematic Group (TW).

Script: Chen Hongyi, Qiu Haozhou, Tang Yixin (modern sequences), Liu Ruixuan (teenage sequences). Overall dialogue polish: Liu Ruixuan. Photography: Tan Yunjia (modern sequences), Che Liangyi [Randy Che] (teenage sequences). Aerial photography: Qiu Haozhou. Editing: Li Dongquan [Wenders Li]. Music: Dong Gang, Tang Jiayue. Production design: Su Guohao (modern sequences), Luo Wenjin (teenage sequences). Art direction: Chen Yizhu (modern sequences), You Zhiyi (teenage sequences). Costume design: Guo Shumin. Styling: Yu Jia’an [Bruce Yu] (modern sequences); Zhan Peiying (teenage sequences). Sound: Luo Songce (modern sequences), Huang Xianshun (teenage sequences). Executive direction: Huang Changzuo.

Cast: Guo Caijie [Amber Kuo] (Lin Xintian), Zheng Kai (Wu Chuan), Li Dongxue (Huang Kequn/Alex), Xie Yilin (Guo Xiaomeng), Li Ronghao (Xiaonan), Qiu Xinyi (teenage Lin Xintian), Lan Xinmei (Lin Xintian’s mother), Tai Zhiyuan (Lin Xintian’s father), Chen Bozheng (Lin Xintian’s grandfather), Wang Caihua (Xiaohua, Lin Xintian’s work colleague), Tu Shan (Qiong’an/Joan, Lin Xintian’s boss), Kou Shaosi (Dai Wei/David), Lin Meixiu (traffic warden), Ren Rongxuan (Huang Kequn’s girlfriend), Wu Sixian (teenage Huang Kequn), Yao Yiqing (teenage Li Jieru), Zheng Weida (Xue Wen), Zhang Caixuan (teenage Guo Xiaomeng), Liu Xinyou [Annie Liu] (Li Jieru), Liu Jiamin (Lin Xintian voiceover).

Release: China, 1 May 2019; Taiwan, 17 May 2019.