Ten Years of Loving You
十年一品温如言
China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 103 mins.
Director: Zhao Fei 赵非.
Rating: 2/10.
Dramatically risible youth melodrama isn’t helped by workaday dialogue and uncharismatic leads.
STORY
Beijing, 2021. Wen Heng (Ren Min) has been living in the capital for 10 years and is a surgeon at Tongguang Hospital. Also working there is her best friend, Xiaowu (Qi Yuchen), who is engaged to Wen Heng’s elder brother, Wen Siwan (Ding Nan). At dinner with them one evening, Wen Siwan’s best friend, Yan Xi (Ding Yuxi), suddenly arrives on his invitation. Yan Xi has been in the US for seven years. He and Wen Heng were once very close before his sudden departure, and since then she’s tried to forget him, despite still dreaming about him. Wen Heng leaves the dinner. But some time later Yan Xi turns up at her workplace, wanting to talk. She introduces him to Gu Feibai (Li Zefeng), a doctor who is her boyfriend (and senior at the hospital), and Yan Xi leaves for the time being. 2011. Wen Heng’s birth parents (Zhu Hongjia, Li Yijuan) have just brought her back from Wushui, a small township in East China where she grew up after she went missing. they explain that her original name was Wen Si’er, which was then given to a girl of the same age whom they adopted in her place. Wen Si’er (Xu Tongxin) reacts hysterically to Wen Heng’s sudden arrival, so at her brother’s suggestion Wen Heng temporarily moves into a vacant house next door that’s owned by his friend Yan Xi’s parents (who are currently overseas with their son). Yan Xi returns unexpectedly that evening but lets her stay in the house on a separate floor. He enrols at the same school as Wen Heng, and defends her when Wen Si’er’s schoolpals try to bully her. As tensions ease, Wen Siwan says she can move back home; but she’s since bought a cute puppy, so uses that as an excuse to stay on in Yan Xi’s home. 2021. Wen Heng is not happy when she finds Yan Xi has moved into the flat next to hers. 2011. As they start to develop feelings for each other, Yan Xi lets Wen Heng have the bedroom next to his. When Wan Si’er sees how close they are, she starts playing games to keep them apart but Yan Xi says he’ll stick by Wen Heng. He goes with her on a trip back to Wushui to visit her adoptive parents, the Yuns (Lu Shiyu, Chen Ying). They return to Beijing in time for Chinese New Year as a united family. Wen Si’er apologises for her behaviour but Wen Heng stays on in Yan Xi’s home until her college entrance exam in 2013. Wen Si’er goes to the UK to study, while Wen Heng prepares to go to medical college. But suddenly Yan Xi has to go to the US (where his parents live in Los Angeles); he tells her to wait for him, but she never hears any news. And then one day he calls and says he’s not coming back. 2021. Wen Heng and Yan Xi have a boozy heart-to-heart in a bar, but he still offers no explanation for what he did. 2017. Wen Heng graduates from medical college. 2021. Wen Heng finally learns the truth about what happened; but a bigger surprise is in store.
REVIEW
Shaanxi-born d.p. Zhao Fei 赵非, who since the mid-1980s has worked for directors like Tian Zhuangzhuang 田壮壮, Chen Kaige 陈凯歌, Feng Xiaogang 冯小刚, Xia Gang 夏刚, Huang Jianxin 黄建新, Jiang Wen 姜文, Ning Hao 宁浩 and Wu Yusen 吴宇森 [John Woo], plus Woody Allen in the US, makes a good-looking but dramatically risible feature debut as a director with Ten Years of Loving You 十年一品温如言. The millennial melodrama, half told in flashback, was the box-office winner of the three Valentine’s Day movies in February, though it managed only a so-so RMB167 million. On a quality level, however, it was the weakest of the trio – which also included 0.1% World 好想去你的世界爱你 and Don’t Forget I love You 不要忘记我爱你 – thanks to a dramatically feeble script, workaday dialogue and uncharismatic leads.
The film is based on the first novel by Henan writer Shu Hai Cang Sheng 书海沧生 (a pseudonym roughly meaning “Born in the Deep Blue Sea of Books”), that was first published on the web in 2009, when she was 20, and as a book two years later (see cover, left). The 600-plus-page book, about an interrupted love affair across a decade, presents problems for any adapter, as it’s told from two perspectives and has a mass of background (that’s been almost entirely omitted in the film). The original script is credited to Cong Xiao 丛晓 (French co-production The Nightingale 夜莺 | Le promeneur d’oiseau, 2013), the final script to Jiao Tingting (Only the Wind Knows 那一场呼啸而过的青春, 2017; My Love 你的婚礼, 2021), and “script advice” to Yuan Yuan 袁媛 (Go Away Mr. Tumor! 滚蛋吧！肿瘤君, 2015; Us and Them 后来的我们, 2018; Tomorrow Will Be Fine 明天会好的, 2021). Whatever the three women separately contributed, the finished result is still a mess, and the prominent billing of B-unit director Cai Jing 蔡婧 (an experienced assistant director) and her d.p. also suggests a tortuous production history.
Though Shanghai-born actor Ding Yuxi 丁禹兮, 26, in his first movie lead, has a tad more personality than usual in such genre fare, he has a dull partner in Hunan-born dancer-turned-actress Ren Min 任敏, 21, whose lead in school-bullying drama Cry Me a Sad River 悲伤逆流成河 (2018) hinted at a more promising future than she ever reveals here. For a start, Ren hardly convinces as a young hospital surgeon; but the ordinary dialogue she and Ding are given is no help, and the film is littered with barely introduced and/or abandoned characters in favour of concentrating on the bland central duo. The script’s biggest cheat, however, is to withhold the reason for the lovebirds’ break-up until an hour into the film, simply to create some plot; when it is revealed as a purely generic device, the film is basically over – but still goes on for a further 20 minutes. The film’s one-note millennial emotions aren’t bolstered by the almost total absence of any parents or older people in the drama; and a soundtrack song is never far away to paper over the script’s cracks.
Technically, it’s a smooth-looking product, led by the widescreen photography of Zhao Mo 赵默 (21 Karat 21克拉, 2018) and invisible editing by the reliable Qiao Aiyu 乔爱宇. After years of legal squabbles between the author and producer, a multi-part TVD, To Our Ten Years, was reportedly shot in late 2020/early 2021, starring actress Yang Xizi 杨肸子 and actor Sun Zeyuan 孙泽源, and directed by Song Yang 宋洋 and Zhu Shaojie 朱少杰 from a script by Shen Yili 沈亿丽, but has yet to be broadcast (see poster, left).
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Enlight Pictures (CN), Beijing Enlight Media (CN), Colorful Enlight (Yangzhou) Pictures (CN), Youth Enlight (Yangzhou) Pictures.
Script: Jiao Tingting. Script advice: Yuan Yuan. Original script: Cong Xiao. Novel: Shu Hai Cang Sheng. Photography: Zhao Mo. Editing: Qiao Aiyu. Music: Zhang Kun, Guo Haowei. Music co-ordination: Wang Jiayi, Jia Qin Chuyi. Art direction: Fu Yingzhang. Styling: Wei Xiangrong. Sound: Long Xiaozhu, Zhang Jinyan. Action: Yang Chongyu. Visual effects: Jiang Chao, Huang Canzhou. B unit: Cai Jing [Cai Erduo] (direction), Hong Wei (photography). Executive direction: Xu Chenwei.
Cast: Ding Yuxi (Yan Xi), Ren Min (Wen Heng), Li Zefeng (Gu Feibai), Xin Yunlai (Lu Liu), Wang Chuan (Xin Dayi), Xu Tongxin (Wen Si’er), Ding Nan (Wen Siwan), Qi Yuchen (Xiaowu), Guo Hong (Auntie Sang), Zhu Hongjia (Mr. Wen), Li Yijuan (Mrs. Wen), Lu Shiyu (Mr. Yun), Chen Ying (Mrs. Yun), Xiao Li Zhenzhen (Yun Zai), Tao Huimin (Yan Xi’s mother), Zhang Luoqi (Qian Minmin).
Release: China, 14 Feb 2022.