Be My Friend

我才不要和你做朋友呢

China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 113 mins.

Director: He Nian 何念.

Rating: 8/10.

Cleverly packaged, well-played light comedy about a teenager who travels back in time and meets a teenage version of the mother she’s come to hate.

STORY

Shenzhen, southern China, summer 2019. Li Jinbu (Zhuang Dafei), 17, never knew her father and has been raised by her mother, Li Qingtong (Chen Haoyu), 37, who spends her evenings in drinking sessions with wealthy men from which Li Jinbu often has to wheel her home, dead drunk. Mother and daughter quarrel endlessly. All that Li Jinbu knows about her father, Chen Junhe, is that he divorced Li Qingtong a couple of months after they were married. One day, after a major row, Li Jinbu, who’s set to go to university in Shanghai, walks out on her mother, threatening never to come back. Still wearing her school uniform, she boards a metro train; and inside the carriage it starts to snow. She walks down the empty train and suddenly finds herself in a crowded train in wintry northeast China several years earlier. The train stops at Tieyuan station and on the platform Li Jinbu sees a teenage girl called Li Qingtong (Chen Haoyu) being persuaded to get on the train with some friends with whom she’s formed a pop group. She accosts her in the train and asks her how old she is: Li Qingtong says she’s 18, so the year must be 1999. When Li Qingtong angrily asks Li Jinbu who in the hell she is, Li Jinbu names Li Qingtong’s mother and father, and then adds that her own name is Yang Dahua, Li Qingtong’s best friend who moved to Shenzhen and went to school there. Li Qingtong can see she’s wearing a Shenzhen school uniform. When one of the group receives a message that he has to return home immediately, the whole group disembarks. En route back to Tieyuan, Li Jinbu discovers that one of the group is actually Chen Junhe (Wang Hao) – her mother’s future “scumbag” husband and her own father she never knew. Li Qingtong invites “Yang Dahua” back to her home, where she meets the girl’s mother, Liu Fengxia (Niu Li), and father, Li Wusi (Jia Bing). They agree to her staying with them when “Yang Dahua” says she’ll privately coach Li Qingtong, whose marks in class are awful. When questioned by Li Jinbu, Li Qingtong denies there’s anything between her and Chen Junhe, insisting they’re just childhood friends. When Li Jinbu questions Chen Junhe, he also denies it and the two end up arguing. Li Jinbu decides to embarrass Chen Junhe – who’s liked by all the girls at the school for his sporting prowess – by spiking his drink before a table-tennis game with a laxative. But it fails to turn Li Qingtong against him. Then a girl in the pop group, Fan Shuishui (Dong Siyi), tells Li Jinbu that the boy whom Li Qingtong really likes is Wu Zhixun (Bi Wenjun), their class’ top pupil who’s especially good in physics. Li Jinbu befriends him, asking him if he’s heard of parallel universes. She encourages him and Li Qingtong to get together and Wu Zhixun starts helping Li Qingtong with her homework. When Li Qingtong sprains her ankle, Li Jinbu – against the wishes of Chen Junhe – takes her place in the pop group. The gaokao (university entrance exam) finally arrives and Li Qingtong manages to pass. But just when she’s looking forward to going to university in Beijing with Wu Zhixun as planned, the latter runs away from home after an argument with his father (Yan Qiang), who wants him to become a banker, not a physicist. Li Jinbu’s mission to keep Li Qingtong and Chen Junhe apart – and thus prevent her own birth – seems to have failed. And then fate plays some unexpected hands.

REVIEW

A high-schooler who hates her single mother travels back 20 years and learns some surprising truths in Be My Friend 我才不要和你做朋友呢, a clever and very smooth re-imagining of a successful online drama series from a couple of years ago. It’s rare for a movie version to use any of the original cast, but here the two lead actresses repeat their roles with subtle changes – in much the same way as the script tightens and re-tools the original for its audience to enjoy anew. Performances are fresh and involving down the line, thanks to accomplished theatre (and occasional TVD) director He Nian 何念, 44, who earlier masterminded a stage version of the original at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre in autumn 2021. Be My Friend is only his second theatrical feature after the enjoyably fluffy odd-couple rom-com 21 Karat 21克拉 (2018). Box office was deservedly better this time round, with a solid RMB204 million this summer.

The original 24-part drama series, I Don’t Want to Be Friends with You 我才不要和你做朋友呢, was released on the online platform Mango TV in May 2020 (see poster, left). Directed by Tian Yu 田宇 and written by Cheng Xiaomao 程小猫 (Miss Puff 泡芙小姐, 2018) and her younger brother Cheng Mengyan 程梦琰 (in their first teaming), it starred Chen Haoyu 陈昊宇 as the 18-year-old version of the teen’s mother and Zhuang Dafei 庄达菲 as the time-travelling teen Li Jinbu. The film version reverses the actress’ billing, gives Zhuang a less tomboyish look with long hair, and – most significantly – has Chen playing both versions of the mother.

In her first major film role, Fuzhou-born Chen, now 32, is entirely believable as both the elegant but acid-tongued 38-year-old alcoholic mother in the early scenes and the cutely likeable but highly obstreperous 18-year-old who takes up most of the movie. Also in her first major film role, Shenyang-born Zhuang, 23, who coincidentally had a tiny part in Miss Puff, is equally striking, with a killer gaze that oozes a just-try-me determination. Most striking of all is that the two actress’ chemistry in the film version is far subtler than in the drama series which, like many, was very discursive and frequently over-played. In her smart re-imagining of the original script, Xiao Shiyao 肖诗瑶, 32, rejigs the leading male roles (disposing of one completely) and comes up with a much better opening and time-travel sequence, which in the original was played as broad comedy in a public bath. Xiao, who’s written for both the stage and TV/online drama, has previously worked with Tian, including the Shanghai stage version (see left) he directed in 2021.

Though the idea is similar to that of other time-travel movies – especially mega-hit Hi, Mom 你好，李焕英 (2021), in which the heroine also meets a younger version of her mother – Be My Friend isn’t so reliant on nostalgia for the past (being set in 1999 rather than the early 1980s of Hi, Mom) and also has a much more focused agenda. Nostalgia for simpler times, when a sense of community was greater and technology didn’t dominate people’s lives, is a growing theme in Mainland cinema, and here, thanks to the realistic, unshowy art direction (especially in the young mother’s home) by Sun Jian 孙健 and the general styling by Zhao Jin 赵津, it’s undoubtedly a part of the film’s attraction. But it never gets in the way of the main plot driver – the determination of 17-year-old Li Jinbu to (a) prevent her mother marrying the “scumbag” who quickly divorced her when pregnant and (b), even better, prevent herself from being born.

The film, thankfully, doesn’t take itself at all seriously. Opening scenes show Li Jinbu regularly taking her mother, Li Qingtong, home on shopping trollies after she’s passed out during drinking sessions with wealthy men, and it’s never really explained whom she hates more – her tart-tongued mother who’s just trying to earn some money or the father she never knew who abandoned Li Qingtong soon after they married. The whole film is played as character comedy rather than serious family drama, with Li Jinbu being transported from Shenzhen back to snowy northeastern China in 1999 and bumping into a (very bolshie) teenage Li Qingtong on a train. After pretending to be a BFF who moved to Shenzhen years earlier, Li Jinbu is invited to stay at Li Qingtong’s home where she gets to know the girl’s parents (i.e. Li Jinbu’s grandparents) and school pals.

Thereon the film plays like a high-school movie with a blackly comic underpinning. Though it still requires a suspension of disbelief, even within its own fantasy universe, the small plot holes are more than disguised by the general quality of the performances. At the plot’s tipping point (around an hour in), when the past and present briefly connect, He’s direction and Xiao’s screenplay come up with their classiest concept, as the movie literally floats in the minds of two drunken protagonists. The film’s finale, when everything is resolved, is genuinely moving.

Zhuang is especially good at the dry comedy – calmly adding a laxative to the drink of a school jock (Wang Hao 王皓, good), who’s her future “scumbag” father, in order to sabotage his relationship with Li Qingtong – and her performance is mirrored by several of the older cast, especially sly comedian Jia Bing 贾冰 as Li Qingtong’s father. Some extra humour comes from the situation of a nice southern girl from (“foreign”) Shenzhen being parachuted into a salt-of-the-earth, northeastern community, but it’s more general flavouring than a major plot point.

Shot mostly in Changchun and Jilin, northeast China, the film consistently looks classy in the widescreen photography of newish name Xu Junhao 徐浚皓 (psycho-horror Endless Loop 黑暗迷宫, 2017; online portmanteau movie Our New Life 我们的新生活, 2021)), whose snowy, period look creates its own, slightly nostalgic magic. Though the Chinese titles of both versions are the same, the English ones differ radically, with the original’s literally translating the Chinese (I Don’t Want to Be Your Friend) and the film’s reversing the meaning (Be My Friend). The two English titles in fact mirror some of the film’s final dialogue.

CREDITS

Presented by Wanda Pictures (CN), Beijing TH Entertainment (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Shanghai Ruyi Film & TV Production (CN), Zhejiang Hengdian Film (CN), Fantawild Pictures (Shenzhen) (CN). Produced by Wanda Pictures (Changchun) (CN).

Script: Xiao Shiyao. Photography: Xu Junhao. Editing: Li Xusheng. Music: Chen Xiaoshu. Art direction: Sun Jian. Costumes: Liu Lingling. Styling: Zhao Jin. Sound: Liu Jiajun, Yang Yicheng, Li Zhikun. Action: Xue Feiwei. Special effects: Miao Yuhang. Visual effects: Miao Yuhang, Li Fu. Executive direction: Jiang Yun.

Cast: Zhuang Dafei (Li Jinbu), Chen Haoyu (Li Qingtong), Wang Hao (Chen Junhe), Bi Wenjun (Wu Zhixun), Jia Bing (Li Wusi), Niu Li (Li Fengxia), Yang Haoyu (Zou, teacher), Qian Fang (Liu Xiuxiu), Che Baoluo (Shenzhen headmaster), Dong Siyi (Fan Shuishui), Wang Jiabao (Wang Xiaomin), Yan Qiang (Wu Zhixun’s father), Wan Guopeng (Niu Xiaohuo).

Release: China, 8 Jun 2024.