Romance Out of the Blue
浪漫天降
China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 93 mins.
Director: Ning Ying 宁瀛.
Rating: 7/10.
Likeable spin on the rom-com template has a peachy part for onetime child actress Guan Xiaotong.
STORY
Beijing, the present day. Along with her flatmate and hometown friend, dancer Jia Siwen (Cui Baoyue), Sha Sha (Guan Xiaotong), from northern Shandong province, applies to join the stewardesses’ training course at Star International Airlines. She’s already aware that only one girl in 100 makes the grade. Among the 3,000 applicants, she just about passes the initial selection round in which 16 girls go forward for three months of hard training under two instructors, the handsome Hu Yingjun (Qiu Ze) and dragon lady Bao Jingjing (Liu Zi). The night before she and Jia Siwen are due to take their first real flight as trainees – from Beijing to Shenzhen – Sha Sha is subject to a mass of confused dreams and fantasies, involving the past few weeks of training with colleagues and instructors and her friendship with a passenger, wealthy businessman Lin Zida (Xia Yu).
REVIEW
A trainee air hostess finds friendship and more in Romance Out of the Blue 浪漫天降, a likeable spin on the rom-com template with a peachy part for former child actress Guan Xiaotong 关晓彤, in her first adult lead. Alongside actor Xia Yu 夏雨 and a colourful cast, Guan throws herself into the role of a klutzy but never-say-die wannabe from the provinces, revealing herself as a considerable comedienne. The other nice surprise is the name on the can – writer-director Ning Ying 宁瀛 who, after making her name on the festival circuit (For Fun 找乐, 1993; On the Beat 民警故事, 1995), has more recently yoyo-ed between more commercial jobs and more personal stuff (To Live and Die in Ordos 警察日记, 2013). No shame there: with her regular d.p., American Sean O’Dea, she turns in a handsome, professional looking package and, as in her supposedly “commercial” comedy The Double Life A面B面 (2010), shows her interest in the comically thin line between sanity and madness in contemporary society.
Beijing-born Guan first made a mark as the title character’s young daughter in peasant drama Nuan 暖 (2003); now 18, and all leggy and grown up, she plays a wannabe from Qingdao who’s come to the big city to snag her dream job – an air hostess on (the fictional) Star International Airlines. Not conventionally pretty, Guan is convincing as an average-looking aspirant and handles the physical antics well. After her very average performance as a rich girl in The Left Ear 左耳 (2015), her transformation here into a lead comic actress is remarkable. But what makes that possible, and makes Romance slightly special, is the tightly-wound script – credited to a certain You Lili 尤丽丽 and Ning herself – in which the entire film is actually a series of flashbacks from the night before the lead’s maiden flight, and in which it becomes more and more unclear what is fact and what is fantasy.
As Guan’s character, Sha Sha 沙沙 – which she keeps pointing out, comically, is her family and given name, not Shasha a given name – goes through a sleepless night before her first real flight, the viewer is immersed in her earlier training under a dragon lady (Liu Zi 刘孜, so good as the hard-arsed editor in Up in the Wind 等风来, 2013) and a handsome male instructor (Taiwan actor-singer Qiu Ze 邱泽). Her comic gaffes are fairly routine entertainment – and do raise the question of how she ever managed to get into the final 16 from 3,000 applicants – but it’s her gradually blossoming friendship with a passenger (played by Xia) that forms the film’s emotional content.
It’s in the latter that fact and fantasy overlap the strongest – to a point where often it’s simply not clear, but who cares anyway. The way in which the film slides between the two to create its own special universe is its biggest strength. Ning jazzes up things with occasional animated inserts (again, a little less cute than the norm) and speeded-up action and voices (again, not overdone); but it’s the film’s free form and creation of an alternate reality that holds the whole thing together – and slightly parallels The Double Life, which blurred the borders between society’s definitions of sanity and madness.
That’s not to load too much baggage on the film, which is primarily an enjoyable rom-com showcasing Guan and her co-stars. As her wealthy “dining-and-drinking friend” 酒肉朋友 who could become more, Xia piles on the bravado and Beijing accent in an over-ripe performance that somehow fits with Guan’s and leads to some tender moments between the goofiness. Qiu basically just stands there and looks good as Sha Sha’s male instructor; Liu has more individual moments as her tough female one, and Cui Baoyue 崔宝月 is OK as her ambitious roommate on the same course. Throughout, the often strikingly composed photography – drawing on O’Dea’s experience in commercials – gives the film a special lift, especially in the cabin sequences.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Star Road Media (CN).
Script: You Lili, Ning Ying. Photography: Sean O’Dea. Editing: Chen Xi. Music: Drew Hanratty. Art direction: Nan Nan. Costume design: Lan Bing. Styling: Wang Xue. Sound: Yu Qiang. Visual effects: Yang Yang, Wang Chengcheng.
Cast: Xia Yu (Lin Zida), Guan Xiaotong (Sha Sha), Qiu Ze (Hu Yingjun, male instructor), Liu Zi (Bao Jingjing, female instructor), Cui Baoyue (Jia Siwen, Sha Sha’s roommate), Bai Jugang (deputy pilot), Zuo Li (You Li, celebrity).
Release: China, 23 Oct 2015.