If You Are the One III
非诚勿扰III
China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 118 mins.
Director: Feng Xiaogang 冯小刚.
Rating: 6/10.
Belated finale to the on-again/off-again love affair is made watchable by actress Shu Qi’s virtuoso performance.
STORY
Sanya, Hainan island, southern China, 2031. Two weeks before his 70th birthday, wealthy retired inventor Qin Fen (Ge You) is visited in his hi-tech hillside home by old friend Fan (Fan Wei), head of Accompany AI Bionic Technology Group, and his assistant Judy (Yu Shuxin). After 20 years, and various ups and downs, Accompany has developed AI robots that are indistinguishable from humans, and Judy is one of them. Qin Fen tells Fan he hasn’t seen Liang Xiaoxiao (Shu Qi) – a young airline stewardess he started romancing back in 2008 and eventually married – for 10 years, since they went on holiday and she suddenly decided to devote her life to cleaning up the planet’s rubbish. Qin Fen adds that she regularly sends him postcards from all around the world, and they’re still married. Fan has come to get Qin Fen’s permission to go ahead with an AI bot version of himself that’s been ordered by someone called Emily Baby. Flattered, Qin Fen agrees – but “Emily Baby” turns out to be Jianguo (Chang Yuan), a gay designer who had a crush on him years earlier. Another of Fan’s clients is a well-known monk, Da Dao (Li Chengru), who wants to order a devoted, respectful disciple. Fan gives him an AI bot from a previous order, whom Da Dao names Chengru (Yue Yunpeng), but the latter turns out to be the opposite of respectful. As a 70th birthday present, Fan gives Qin Fen an AI bot of Liang Xiaoxiao (Shu Qi), who can show him complete obedience but isn’t programmed to sleep with him. However, after a while Qin Fen becomes bored with the bot and asks her to reprogramme herself so she’s like the argumentative Liang Xiaoxiao he always knew. Unknown to Qin Fen, the real Liang Xiaoxiao has given up her crusade to clean up the planet and returned home. When Fan tells her about the AI bot he gave Qin Fen, she has an idea… One day Wu Sang (Wu Yicong), Qin Fen’s friend in Hokkaido, Japan, turns up; they get drunk in a Japanese bar and the reprogrammed Liang Xiaoxiao bot (Shu Qi) turns up to drive them home. Then Mango (Yao Chen), the ex-wife of Li Xiangshan (Song Honglei), a mutual friend who committed suicide a decade earlier, turns up with Li Xiangshan’s daughter Chuanchuan (Guan Xiaotong). Qin Fen introduces them to his bot, and the four have dinner on the terrace, with Mango as cynical about marriage as ever. After they leave, however, Qin Fen suddenly has a heart attack and is rushed to hospital. After he recovers sufficiently, he’s sent home; but while he’s being given a back massage by his bot, the “real” Liang Xiaoxiao (Shu Qi) walks in, saying she’s now back after 10 years.
REVIEW
Thirteen years after the release of the last film, the on-again/off-again love affair between a super-wealthy, retired inventor and a much younger, onetime air stewardess reaches its finale in If You Are the One III 非诚勿扰III. Veteran director Feng Xiaogang 冯小刚, Mainland actor Ge You 葛优 and Taiwan-born actress Shu Qi 舒淇 reunite – along with several faces from the 2008 and 2010 movies – to mixed results. With a plot that embraces China’s current obsession with AI, the movie is again made watchable by Shu Qi’s guileless playing, this time as three versions of her character. It’s the first feature by Feng, 65, since the New Zealand-set love story Only Cloud Knows 只有芸知道 (2019), an atypical work which didn’t exactly set the box office alight, unlike his mega-hit Youth 芳华 (2017). Whether IYATOIII really needed to be made is another question: Mainland audiences weren’t that impressed, with the film taking even less than Cloud – a (very) polite RMB102 million, compared with the previous two movies’ RMB364 million and RMB472 million (hunky amounts for their time).
Though the possibility of a third film was teased at the end of II, the reality turns out to be rather different. The narrator had told the audience that the pair finally married in 2030, i.e. 20 years after the year in which II was set, when Ge’s Qin Fen would have been around his mid-70s. However, III is set in 2031, when Qin Fen is about to celebrate his 70th birthday, and the pair have been married for well over 10 years as Shu Qi’s Liang Xiaoxiao took off a decade ago on an eco-crusade to clean up the world’s rubbish. Another minor difference from I and II – both of which were set in real time, in the years they were released – is that III is set eight years in the future, to be able to incorporate the sophisticated AI that’s key to the plot.
Like the previous films, this one also has a two-act rather than traditional three-act structure, and the best stuff is very much in the second half. When the film opens, the couple’s history is rapidly recapped with brief extracts from I and II – a device that recurs throughout the movie – before settling down with Qin Fen, who still lives in his idyllic hillside home on the tropical island of Hainan – but now with a hi-tech upgrade that includes virtual screens and an AI butler (voiced by popular comedian Wang Baoqiang 王宝强). What he does every day is anyone’s guess, though we learn that his wife Liang Xiaoxiao has been away on her eco-crusade for 10 years and regularly sends him postcards from around the world.
Qin Fen’s home now has a “futuristic” colour scheme that’s based on the light blue Cloud Gate 云门 colour in the traditional Chinese chart, with a range of other pastel colours spun off of that. According to the film-makers, it’s intended to show the whole film as a kind of dream by Qin Fen; but the colour scheme is rarely used beyond Qin Fen’s flat, and ends up as more of a pointless distraction – as well as (unfairly) looking like a rip-off of the look of the US film Barbie, released six months earlier when IYATOIII had just started shooting.
In the first of a string of returning characters, obsessive inventor Fan (veteran comedian Fan Wei 范伟), who bookended I, is now head of an AI company that’s finally succeeded in manufacturing bots that are indistinguishable from humans. Noticing Qin Fen’s loneliness, he gives him a Liang Xiaoxiao bot to keep him company until the real Liang Xiaoxiao returns. Dissatisfied with its complete obedience, Qin Fen orders it to reprogramme itself into a less compliant version. Meanwhile, unknown to Qin Fen, the real Liang Xiaoxiao has finally returned, hears about the bot, and has an idea. And then a few days later another Liang Xiaoxiao turns up, claiming to be the real one.
Without actually spelling it out, Feng and co-writer Zhang Yaozhi 张耀之 – a Beijing-born production manager who worked on Feng’s online series Crossroad Bistro 北辙南辕 (2021) and Echo 回响 (2023), plus wrote the wannabe cheeky rom-com One Night Stud 有种你爱我 (2015) with director Li Xinman 李欣蔓 – don’t leave much doubt as to what Liang Xiaoxiao’s “idea” is. More importantly, when actress Shu Qi properly enters the movie at that 47-minute mark, her presence ushers in the film’s second half, in which, as in I and II, Liang Xiaoxiao keeps testing Qin Fen’s feelings about and commitment to her. In that respect, III is little different from the two earlier films, even though its second half is much lighter than previously.
Most of all, even when playing three different versions of the same character (some of which are meant to be AI bots), Shu Qi still manages, as in I and II, to maintain the characteristic freshness that has marked her whole career – as if she’s just walked on set prior to the director calling “action!” The 47-year-old actress unfortunately makes relatively few movies nowadays, as, equally, does the 66-year-old Ge – and, if nothing else, IYATOIII shows how much Chinese cinema is missing out. Her chemistry with Ge – as the egotistical, serial dissimulator – is as intact as ever.
On the downside, the film takes far too long to get to the point, and contains a lot of padding by characters from the previous films. The first three-quarters-of-an-hour, which is basically a lead up to Liang Xiaoxiao’s proper entrance and the whole AI bot idea, has several guest cameos that serve little or no dramatic purpose: Ma Hua FunAge 开心麻花 comedian Chang Yuan 常远 (Warm Hug 温暖的抱抱, 2020) as an old gay acquaintance who still has the hots for Qin Fen; Wu Yicong 邬逸聪 as an old pal from Hokkaido, Japan; and most gratuitous of all, TV veteran Li Chengru 李诚儒 and tubby comedian Yue Yunpeng 岳云鹏 as a monk and his stroppy AI bot. Fan’s role is purely a plot device and way over-extended, leading to several scenes where he and Ge just bounce off each other in typically dry, northern stand-up. The only cameo that justifies itself is that by Yao Chen 姚晨 – another actress too little seen nowadays on the big screen – as the cynical ex-wife of Qin Fen’s late best friend. Her sequence is one of the best in the whole film.
Taking over d.p. duties from Lv Yue 吕乐, Zhong Rui 钟锐 (My Dear Liar 受益人, 2019; Wild Grass 荞麦疯长, 2020; One and Only 热烈, 2023) turns in a good-looking widescreen product that’s as much at ease in ordinary street scenes as in Qin Fen’s colour-styled hillside home (courtesy production designer/stylist Gao Ang 郜昂 [The Wandering Earth 流浪地球, 2019; The Wandering Earth II 流浪地球2, 2023] and veteran Hong Kong artistic advisor Zhang Shuping 张叔平 [William Chang]). A busy, soloistic score by Ma Shangyou 马上又 (Sacrifice 赵氏孤儿, 2010) keeps things moving, especially in the over-padded first half.
CREDITS
Presented by China Film Creative (Beijing) (CN), Zhejiang Dongyang Mayla Media (CN), China Film (CN), Huayi Brothers Pictures (CN), Xinjiang Bona Runze Film Culture Media (CN). Produced by China Film (CN), Zhejiang Dongyang Mayla Media (CN).
Script: Feng Xiaogang, Zhang Yaozhi. Photography: Zhong Rui. Editing: Yu Baiyang. Music: Ma Shangyou. Production design: Gao Ang. Art direction: Wang Zhijian. Styling: Gao Ang. Styling design: Cao Zheng. Sound: Wen Bo. Action: Baozi. Visual effects: John Hughes, Pranesh Chavan (Tau Films). Artistic advice: Zhang Shuping. Creative advice: Liu Zhenyun. Executive direction: Zhao Zuxiang.
Cast: Ge You (Qin Fen), Shu Qi (Liang Xiaoxiao), Fan Wei (Fan), Li Chengru (Da Dao, monk), Yue Yunpeng (Chengru, Da Dao’s disciple), Chang Yuan (Jianguo/Emily Baby), Yao Chen (Mangguo/Mango), Guan Xiaotong (Chuanchuan), Wu Yicong (Wu Sang), Yi Xiaoxing (reporter), Yu Shuxin (Zhu Di/Judy, Fan’s assistant), Lv Xing (Li, Da Dao’s patient), Zhang Lei (man in sunglasses, Da Dao’s patient), Ya Mei (short-haired woman, Da Dao’s patient), Xu Duo (teenage schoolgirl, Da Dao’s patient), Sun Ning (waiter), Liu Xue (male White Snake), Wang Changrui (male Green Snake), Cao Xuheng (first-aid doctor), Wang Baoqiang (voice of Baoqiang, Qin Fen’s AI butler), Zhang Hanyu (off-screen narrator).
Release: China, 30 Dec 2023.