Almost Love
遇见你
China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 109 mins.
Director: Luo Luo 落落 [Zhao Jiarong 赵佳蓉].
Rating: 5/10.
Initially interesting youth romance is worth a quick look for a lively performance by young actress Xu Ruohan.
STORY
Chuning, eastern coastal China, autumn 2008. While opening a small DVD shop with the help of her best male friend Yuwen Hai (Wang Bowen), Yu Jiaoyang (Xu Ruohan) has an accident that leads to her DVD covers going up in flames. At the same time, Zhou Can (Li Wenhan), a transfer student from Beijing, arrives in a taxi with his mother (Ke Lan) to stay in accommodation above the shop. Zhou Can has transferred to the local senior high school for a year simply to pass the university entrance exam (gaokao) so his ambitious parents can get him into Renmin University of China, back in Beijing, to study business administration. Yu Jiaoyang lives with her maternal grandmother (Wei Qing), with whom she has a close relationship. At school she’s nicknamed Rubbish Bin 垃圾桶 by her fellow students and is always getting into trouble. Zhou Can notices she’s in the same class as him and drops by her DVD shop one evening; however, he’s interrupted by his controlling mother passing by. Much to the dislike of Yuwen Hai, Yu Jiaoyang and Zhou Can gradually get to know each other; but Zhou Can is wary of getting involved as everything is focused on him getting into university – even though he’s actually more interested in painting than business. But he agrees to help her get some business by painting display posters for some film titles she stocks. When Zhou Can’s mother hears what he’s been doing, she verbally attacks Yu Jiaoyang at school, telling Zhou Can not to get involved with such “rubbish”. Without telling his mother, Zhou Can enters a local art competition, and Yu Jiaoyang helps him out with a problem on the day, during a typhoon. The gaokao comes around and afterwards he kisses her, to show it’s not over between them, just the beginning. By Oct 2009 they’re both at university in Beijing; but despite living on opposite sides of the city their relationship seems to survive.
REVIEW
After a strong start with office rom-com The Last Women Standing 剩者为王 (2015), Shanghai writer-turned-filmmaker Luo Luo 落落 (pen name of Zhao Jiarong 赵佳蓉, 40) had much more mixed results with her next two films, school-bullying drama Cry Me a Sad River 悲伤逆流成河 (2018) and fantasy youth romance The End of Endless Love 如果声音不记得 (2020), both of which suffered from structural and directing problems. Her fourth feature, Almost Love 遇见你, falls between the two extremes: one of several friends-or-lovers youth romances released this year (Love Can’t Be Said 一直一直都很喜欢你; Close to Love 我们的样子像极了爱情), it’s animated, at least in its first hour, by a lively performance from actress Xu Ruohan 徐若晗, in her first big-screen starring role, before it loses narrative thrust and too often just marks time in a slick but formulaic way. Box office was a meh RMB78 million.
Ironically, Sad River and Endless Love each managed to earn over RMB300 million, five times the weedy take of Last Women, partly because they were creatively produced 监制 by popular youth stylista Guo Jingming 郭敬明 of Tiny Times 小时代 fame, partly because office rom-coms were already falling out of fashion, and partly because both perfectly hit their target audience of Gen-00 girls. Almost Love is also squarely aimed at the same audience but is the first of Luo Luo’s movies not adapted from a novel or novella either by her or Guo. It’s an original screenplay – also known at various times as 在最好的时光遇见你 (literally, “Meeting You at the Best Time”) and 婚礼的那一天 (“That Day of the Wedding”) – that was co-written with Zhai Pei 翟培, one of several who penned the fine crime procedural Sheep without a Shepherd 误杀 (2019), based on an Indian hit. Eventually opting for the short and sweet title 遇见你 (“Meeting You”), the film actually has an interesting idea at its core: a high-school friendship that slowly grows into love and then falls apart as real life later intrudes – but supposedly with no regrets, at least on the woman’s side, as they both lived the best they could at the best time in their lives.
Unfortunately, the script just isn’t up to the higher ambitions of the central theme, and even Xu becomes hostage to its blandness in the second half. Though it probably wasn’t a problem for Gen-00 viewers, an excessive amount of time is spent texting each other rather than having real conversations – which also helps to trivialise the human drama. Overall the film could easily lose 15 minutes: the final 20 are especially dragged out, with the heroine senselessly leaving the hero again after meeting him (a year later) at an art exhibition, and then (two years later) putting the best spin possible on a lost opportunity. Crucially, it’s never exactly spelled out why she decided to dump him, apart from a unavoidable work problem that delays him at a crucial moment.
The best stuff is in the first 40 minutes, set in the fictional seaside town of Chuning, where she is a wilful student at senior high school and he is a transfer student from Beijing staying in rooms above her tiny dvd shop. Their growing friendship is nicely sketched, with not too many cute moments (such as sheltering under rubbish bins during a typhoon) and not even a soundtrack song until they first kiss (38 minutes in) after sitting the university entrance exam. Thereafter, the script has a more manufactured feel and, as the girl’s playful side is toned down as the action moves to Beijing, the expressionless, pretty-boy playing of boybander Li Wenhan 李汶翰, 28, in his first major film role, can’t fill the gap. After her nothing role as the animal-loving Fareeda in the Cheng Long 成龙 [Jackie Chan] action movie Vanguard 急先锋 (2020), Xi’an-born Xu, 24, could only go up, and here she’s a revelation as the free-spirited high-schooler who’s nicknamed Rubbish Bin by her classmates. Other roles are insignificant.
Luo Luo’s films have always looked good and Almost Love is no exception, with some eye-catching widescreen photography (especially around dusk) by notable camera operator-turned-d.p. Chen Zhoufei 陈宙飞 (crime caper Foolish Plan 呆呆计划, 2016) of locations around Xiamen, Fujian province, in the first half.
CREDITS
Presented by iQiyi Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Xiamen Hengye Pictures (CN). Produced by iQiyi Pictures (Beijing) (CN).
Script: Luo Luo [Zhao Jiarong], Zhai Pei. Photography: Chen Zhoufei. Editing: Dai Bing. Editing advice: Yang Hongyu. Music: Zhong Zonghao, Yang Yi. Art direction: Shan Yishou. Styling: Yan Zi. Sound: Xu Hongtao, Guan Chongyang, Feng Yanming. Action: Yang Chongyu. Visual effects: Xu Yao (Beijing Phenom Films). Executive direction: Luo Tianyou.
Cast: Li Wenhan (Zhou Can), Xu Ruohan (Yu Jiaoyang), Wang Bowen (Yuwen Hai), Gao Qiuzi (Li Yujin), Ke Lan (Zhou Can’s mother), Chen Tianming (Dafei, street thug), Lian Kai (Zhou Can’s father), Tan Kai (Huang Liangyi), Fu Miao (Sun, company manager), Wei Qing (Yu Jiaoyang’s maternal grandmother), Li Ping (director of teaching), Guo Jiayi (Lin, teacher), Li Dongheng (Bei), Huang Ziqi (Qian Pei, Yu Jiaoyang’s high-school BFF), Wang Shuilin (Xiaohe), Li Dianzun (Hu Chunyang), Liang Mengyi (Yan Mei).
Release: China, 4 Aug 2022.