Forever Young

怒放之青春再见

China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 100 mins.

Director: Lu Gengxu 卢庚戌.

Rating: 7/10.

Engaging portrait of middle-aged friends who remember their rock-filled college days.

STORY

Beijing, the present day. Almost 40, easy-going Ma Lu (Pan Yueming) runs a dating agency and has a wife, An Jing (Liu Zi), and a young daughter, Jiajia (Wang Kexin), who both nag him. One day he gets a call from Li Ai, the onetime love of his life whom he hasn’t seen since college 20 years earlier. She says she’s in town to get divorced and invites him to dinner, but Ma Lu has to drop out at the last moment. He remembers his carefree days as a young man (Lv Yulai) at Beitian University, his friendship with Zheng Tianliang (Zhang Xiaochen), and the two of them first meeting Li Ai (Wen Xin) and her friend Liu Yun (Wang Sisi) on campus. It’s the age of early rock in China, so the two men set up a rock group, Forever Young 怒放乐队, with bassist Hou Liang (Wang Xiaokun) and drummer Qian Dabao (Du Haitao), partly to attract girls. The group enters a college music competition and they become minor celebrities. But Ma Lu, painfully shy, still can’t bring himself to declare his love for Li Ai, even when she’s brazenly picked up by rock star Zhang Wu (Yan Kuan). In the present day, Ma Lu meets Zheng Tianliang (Qin Hao), who says he and Liu Yun (Tan Zhuo) are still together, though they still haven’t married and she squabbles with him as always. Ma Lu tells him that Li Ai is visiting Beijing but he has yet to meet her.

REVIEW

Produced by Teng Huatao 滕华涛, who directed hit rom-com Love Is Not Blind 失恋33天 (2011), and confidently directed by first-timer Lu Gengxu 卢庚戌, a singer/music producer, Forever Young 怒放之青春再见 is an engaging let’s-form-a-rock-band period musical full of strong performances and with a crowd-pleasing finale. It’s much more conventional than another recent feature debut by a singer – Blue Sky Bones 蓝色骨头 (2013) by rock legend Cui Jian 崔健 – but none the worse for it, despite having a similar structure that shuttlecocks between two periods 20 years apart. Instead of looking at the cultural and political changes in Mainland life, Lu’s partly autobiographical movie is simply about hitting middle age and regrets over lost chances in one’s youth – here through the story of Ma Lu, a mild-mannered dating-agency boss (quietly played by Pan Yueming 潘粤明) whose memories of college life are triggered when the onetime love of his life suddenly contacts him after two decades.

The period college scenes, set at fictional Beitian University 北天大学, are the heart of the film and have some of the same energy and good cast chemistry as So Young 致我们终将逝去的青春 (2013), though from a more musical perspective as a group of friends set up a rock band in order to pull girls. (It’s the 1990s, when the Hong Kong rock band Beyond and Mainland rock singer Dou Wei 窦唯 were kings.) After the band breaks up when its star performer leaves to pursue to solo career, Ma Lu still hasn’t brought himself to declare his love for the pretty Li Ai. It’s 20 years before the four friends finally rediscover their inner rock musician. Once a rocker, always a rocker – a sentiment that writer-director Lu, now 44, would no doubt agree with.

The main weakness of the script is a lack of balance: the present-day characters aren’t half as interesting or vital as their ’90s versions and, though the time switches aren’t annoying, there’s an especially big disconnect between the young and middle-aged versions of Ma Lu. Director Lu and his three other writers don’t have much to say about the character, whose main problem as a young man seems to be just terminal shyness and as a middle-aged man just terminal weediness, neither of which are handled in a consistently entertaining or comedic way. Ma Lu is surrounded by far more interesting characters, not least his charismatic friend Zheng Tianliang, a born rock star, who’s strongly played as an ambitious young man by Zhang Xiaochen 张晓晨 and as a more philosophical middle-aged one by Qin Hao 秦昊 (Blind Massage, 2014).

As the younger Ma Lu, indie actor Lv Yulai 吕聿来 (Beijing Flickers 有种, 2012; Trap Street 水印街, 2013) pairs okay with Wen Xin 温心 (Sorry I Love You 对不起我爱你, 2013) as the winsome Li Ai. However, on the female side it’s Wang Sisi 王思思, who makes more of a screen mark as Liu Yun, her college friend who loves playing hard to get. The resolution in middle age of Zheng Tianliang and Liu Yun’s relationship is the film’s real emotional climax. Other roles are all strongly drawn, and the cast is peppered with cameos by rock musicians like Cui, Wang Feng 汪峰 and Beyond’s Ye Shirong 叶世荣 [Yip Sai-wing].

The largely handheld photography by Germany’s Florian Zinke 陆一帆 (Double Xposure 二次曝光, 2012) has a pastel-like texture in the ’90s scenes that matches the light playing, and the various songs (with some written by Lu himself) are all hummably employed. The Chinese title is the name of the rock group – which literally means “In Full Bloom” rather than “Forever Young” – plus a subsidiary title meaning “Goodbye Youth”.

CREDITS

Presented by eMei Media (CN), Pan Vision Films (CN), YYT Media (CN), iTimes Culture Media (CN), EE-Media (CN), Enlight Pictures (CN), Beijing MaxTimes Culture Development (CN).

Script: Lu Gengxu, Wang An’an, Cong Yang, Wang Ang. Photography: Florian Zinke. Editing: uncredited. Music: Hou Dudu, Lu Gengxu. Songs: Lu Gengxu. Music direction: Lu Gengxu. Art direction: Du Guangyu. Styling: Lei Yaqi. Sound: Gao Yiming, Qiao Di, Mo Huijia. Postproduction direction: Liu Lei.

Cast: Pan Yueming (Ma Lu), Lv Yulai (young Ma Lu), Qin Hao (Zheng Tianliang), Zhang Xiaochen (young Zheng Tianliang), Wen Xin (young Li Ai), Liu Zi (An Jing, Ma Lu’s wife), Du Haitao (young Qian Dabao), Wang Xiaokun (young Hou Liang), Han Qiuchi (Hou Liang), Wang Dongfang (Qian Dabao), Wang Sisi (young Liu Yun), Tan Zhuo (Liu Yun), Cui Jian, Wang Feng (themselves), Yan Kuan (Zhang Wu), Ye Shirong [Yip Sai-wing] (himself), Zhang Qi (guitar player), Lu Gengxu (singer in underpass), Wang Kexin (Ma Jia, Ma Lu’s daughter), Li Muhan (Qian Dabao’s son), Wang Di (Ma Lu’s female office colleague).

Release: China, 10 Jan 2014.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 11 Jun 2014.)