More Than Blue

比悲伤更悲伤的故事

Taiwan, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 104 mins.

Director: Lin Xiaoqian 林孝谦 [Gavin Lin].

Rating: 6/10.

Close remake of a South Korean weepie is animated by Taiwan actress Chen Yihan’s engaging performance.

STORY

Taibei city, Taiwan, the present day. Singer A Lin (A Lin) and her manager Amanda (Zhang Yunxi) are urgently looking for new lyrics to a song she’s recording, and by chance their driver (Wu Chengyang) plays them a song that he was sent by a friend, Bang (He Haochen). A Lin likes it and their driver takes them straight to Bang, who’s retired from the music business and now runs a small restaurant. He says the writer of the lyrics, Song Yuanyuan, aka Cream (Chen Yihan), is unreachable, and her longtime partner, well-known music producer Zhang Zhekai, aka K (Liu Yihao), is dead. (From the age of 16, in 2002, Zhang Zhekai had lived alone but at senior high school that year he’d met fellow pupil Song Yuanyuan who’d brightened up his life. It had been love at first sight and, after going on to the same university, they had lived together as soulmates. Both were orphaned: her parents had died in a car crash and his father had died from cancer and his mother moved away. What Zhang Zhekai had not dared tell Song Yuanyuan was that he had the same cancer, at a cellular level, as his father. Zhang Zhekai had started a recording studio but been feeling weaker and weaker at work; Song Yuanyuan had a success rewriting some lyrics for a temperamental novelty singer, Bonnie [Wu Yingjie]. One evening Song Yuanyuan had told Bonnie that her 10-year relationship with Zhang Zhekai was a platonic friendship, free of complications, and that he wanted her to marry “a good man”. She had found one in dentist Yang Youxian [Zhang Shuhao], a high-school friend of work colleague Lisa [Lin Zixi], but Yang Youxian had been engaged to longtime girlfriend Cindy [Chen Tingni], a photographer. Meanwhile, Zhang Zhekai had learned he had only about a year to live. First he’d tried to break up Yang Youxian and Lisa’s relationship, to leave the field clear for Song Yuanyuan, and then had made a secret deal with the ambitious Lisa.)

REVIEW

Not for the first time in her decade-long career, Taiwan actress Chen Yihan 陈意涵 (Hear Me 听说, 2009; Campus Confidential 爱情无全顺, 2013; Paradise in Service 军中乐园, 2014) helps to elevate an average movie to an occasionally interesting one in More Than Blue 比悲伤更悲伤的故事, a Taiwan remake of a South Korean weepie that’s better overall than the original without being any more believable. Chen’s perky, funny and sensitive performance – which alone is worth an extra point – animates the whole film, but especially the central relationship with her character’s cancer-riddled soulmate, glumly played by Taiwan actor-singer-model Liu Yihao 刘以豪 in a scruffy, long-haired wig. In his fifth feature, Taiwan writer-director Lin Xiaoqian 林孝谦 [Gavin Lin] turns in an atmospheric, smoothly mounted production that avoids being lachrymose for its own sake but isn’t especially moving either. A hit on home territory (NT$239 million), partly thanks to Liu’s teenie-appeal, it’s more surprisingly enjoying huge success in the Mainland (where the original Korean film was never released theatrically), taking almost RMB900 million in its first two weeks.

The film is a very close remake of (and even has an identical running time to) the drama More Than Blue 슬픔보다 더 슬픈 이야기 (2009), a first feature by writer-director Weon Tae-yeon 원태연 | 元泰橪 (see poster, left). Starring actress Yi Bo-yeong 이보영 | 李宝英 and actor Gweon Sang-u 권상우 | 权相佑, it was a moderate success in South Korea and was released in Taiwan under the Chinese title 最悲伤的故事 (“The Saddest Story”, see poster, below left). Lin’s remake, which recycles the English title yet again, has a slightly different Chinese one this time (literally, “A Sadder Than Sad Story”) that’s almost ironic.

Lin, 38, has yet to fulfil the promise of his second feature, the simple but impressive period drama Revenge of the Factory Woman 与爱别离 (2010) set in 1970s Taiwan. However, he and regular co-writer Lv Anxian 吕安弦 (earlier known as Lv Longshi 吕鑨谥) have made almost the best fist possible of the original material, a fanciful, highly manufactured story centred on a pair of platonic lovebirds whose male half hides the fact he has terminal cancer and tries to arrange for the female half to marry “a good man”. Lv and Lin’s script is often a scene-for-scene remake, with large chunks of the original dialogue. Overall, however, it has a lighter tone and more broadly-drawn characters, plus a much more textured look thanks to the rich widescreen photography by Hong Kong d.p. Guan Benliang 关本良 [Kwan Pun-leung] (Zoom Hunting 猎艳, 2010), very different from the cold, flat colours of the Korean original.

The most notable addition is extra scenes between Chen’s character and the ditzy songstress (wide-eyed singer-actress Wu Yingjie 吴映洁) for whom she writes lyrics: these make explicit the asexual relationship between the two leads, with Chen jokily admitting they’ve only made love “0.5 times”. Chen’s clever performance (including playing 10 years or more younger than her real age, 36) and the metrosexual, boyish looks of co-lead Liu, 32, almost make the leads’ platonic relationship believable – something the original, with its standard Korean lookers, never did. Where the original really scored was in the ironic portrayal of the girl’s putative husband by the likeable Yi Beom-su 이범수 | 李凡秀, far lighter and more characterful than the pin-uppy, wooden performance here by Zhang Shuhao 张书豪 (the lead in cross-straits rom-com Unpolitical Romance 水饺几两, 2012).

Supporting cast is okay, with TV actress-model Chen Tingni 陈庭妮, 29, suitably vampy as the ambitious girlfriend of the putative husband and real-life aboriginal singer A Lin, aka Huang Liling 黄丽玲, as the singer who sparks the whole story. Given the subject matter, music by Chen Jianqi 陈建骐 and Luo Enni 罗恩妮 is refreshingly restrained, in line with the film’s gently gliding, observational camerawork. The running time feels unnecessarily distended in the second half, especially the final 20 minutes.

CREDITS

Presented by MM2 Entertainment Taiwan (TW), Good Movie (TW). Produced by Good Movie (TW), MM2 Entertainment Taiwan (TW).

Script: Lv Anxian, Lin Xiaoqian [Gavin Lin]. Photography: Guan Benliang [Kwan Pun-leung]. Editing: Jiang Yining. Music: Chen Jianqi, Luo Enni. Art direction: Yao Guozhen. Styling: Zhang Chouting. Sound: Jian Fengshu.

Cast: Chen Yihan (Song Yuanyuan/Cream), Liu Yihao (Zhang Zhekai/K), Zhang Shuhao (Yang Youxian/Gordon), Chen Tingni (Cindy), He Haochen (Bang), Wu Yingjie (Xiaomaonv/Kitty/Bonnie), Yuki Dagi [You Daqing] (Ji, Bonnie’s manager), A Lin [Huang Liling] (A Lin), Xu Shihao (Dong), Zhang Yunxi (Amanda, A Lin’s manager), Wu Chengyang (Xiaoyou, A Lin’s driver), Shi Zhitian (young Zhang Zhikai), Yao Aining (young Song Yuanyuan), Li Yunchan (schoolteacher), Lin Fudong (photographer), Lin Zixi (Lisa), Zeng Yuzhong (Feng Yi), Hou Yanxi (recording producer), Hai Yufen (Maggie), Xu Yaxin (Xiaomei), Yin Zhaode (De, doctor), Zhu Jiawei, Qiu Xingyi (dental assistants), Wang Shaokui (Michael, Bonnie’s dance teacher), Huang Caiyi (Zhang Zhikai’s mother), Lv Anxian (musicvideo director).

Premiere: Busan Film Festival (Open Cinema), 7 Oct 2018.

Release: Taiwan, 30 Nov 2018.