Promise of Decades
多想和你再见一面
China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 108 mins.
Directors: Xu Xinxian 徐欣羡 [Tracy Choi], Tang Jiahui 唐家辉.
Rating: 5/10.
Standard, over-stretched rom-com is rescued by some likeable performances and an uncomplicated tone.
STORY
Macau, autumn 1999. Sandy (He Chaolian), the teenage daughter of beef offal soup restaurateur Shen Ji [Sun Kee] (Zeng Zhiwei), is told by a fortune teller (Ai Wei) that she’s fated to meet a man from the north. While buying a DVD of US film Titanic at a street stall, she bumps into Qiao Mingzhuang (Ci Sha), 20, an exchange student from Beijing who’s studying architecture. The two of them are almost killed by an exploding car – due to gang warfare – but later she invites him to meet her at 23:00 that night. It’s a cinema where she knows the projectionist, and while he’s asleep she puts on a reel of Titanic. After introducing Qiao Mingzhuang to her father, Sandy invites him to watch a fireworks display the next evening, but he says he can’t come as he’s flying back to Beijing that night. So they make a vow to watch it together in exactly 10 years’ time, in 2009. In the meantime they correspond. At the end of 1999, on 20 Dec, Macau is officially handed over to the Mainland. In 2001 they speak briefly on the phone and she makes plans to go to Beijing’s Jinghua University instead of Macau University. But she then starts to think that Qiao Mingzhuang isn’t serious about their relationship, as he still hasn’t declared his feelings. So she starts funnelling her energies instead into setting up a mobile version of her father’s business in Macau. Meanwhile, at a dinner with friends in Beijing, Qiao Mingzhuang is cornered by Bian Xiaorong (Liu Yichun), a fellow student who fancies him. Qiao Mingzhuang receives a present of a mobile phone from Sandy, and then her father pays for her to fly to Beijing on a surprise visit. However, the trip doesn’t go well: after seeing Qiao Mingzhuang with Bian Xiaorong, Sandy runs off. Years later, in 2008, the two meet by chance during some flood-relief work, and they renew their “friendship” before he becomes involved in the massive Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge project. A further 10 years are to pass before they resolve their relationship.
REVIEW
The third feature by Macau-born film-maker Xu Xinxian 徐欣羡 [Tracy Choi], 36, Promise of Decades 多想和你再见一面 is an uncomplicated youth-romance-at-a-distance that’s buoyed by likeable performances. The story of a 20-year relationship between a Macau restaurateur’s daughter and a Beijing architect which, despite their best intentions, never gets going due to distance and misundertandings is what it is and nothing more. The screenplay by Beijing Film Academy professor Wu Bing 吴兵 (Black Dog 狗阵, 2024) and Lin Qinqin 林琴琴 (a graduate of Zhuhai-based UIC’s Cinema & TV school) doesn’t take the material to the next level and ends up being a standard rom-com, despite the characters being more engaging than in, say, the similarly themed Stay with Me 我是真的讨厌异地恋 (2022). Despite that, it died at the Mainland box office at the end of last year, with a tiny RMB2.5 million.
After her previous two features, Sisterhood 骨妹 (2016) and Lonely Eighteen 我们的十八岁 (2023), both centred on very close female relationships, Promise is Xu’s first out-and-out heterosexual love story – and one that owes a lot of the charm it has to the performance of He Chaolian 何超莲, 34, daughter of late Macau casino mogul He Hongshen 何鸿燊 [Stanley Ho] and wife of Mainland-born, Vancouver-raised actor Dou Xiao 窦骁 [Shawn Dou], in her first major screen role. As the wilful daughter of a backstreets eaterie owner who specialises in beef offal soup (Hong Kong veteran Zeng Zhiwei 曾志伟 [Eric Tsang] in a blithely humorous performance), she drives the whole film with her raw energy and changing moods.
As the man in (and out of) her life, Mainland actor Ci Sha 此沙, 28, aka Nuosu Muguregu Jiwucisha, an Yi minority actor from Sichuan province, often has trouble keeping up with her, though his uncomplicated boyish charm is a suitable antidote to He’s wide emotional range. Six years younger than He, but playing a couple of years older, Ci Sha is cleverly aged in a story set across two decades, while He looks 20-something throughout.
The script is conspicuously set around major events like the 1999 Handover of Macau and the construction of the massive Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, but still barely makes it across the 100-odd-minutes running time. The final 20 minutes feel especially stretched out, with even a new character introduced to get across the finishing line. However, like Xu’s previous films, the whole thing looks good; and the slick packaging, with songs and smooth editing by Hong Kong veteran Zhang Jiahui 张嘉辉 [Cheung Ka-fai] (who here takes a creative producer 监制 credit as well), ensures Promise ticks over in an undemanding way. Widescreen photography by Macau d.p. Zhang Qianwei 张倩薇 (Sisterhood) is consistently good-looking; scoring for all moods by France-born, US-based Jérôme Leroy (I Love You, to the Moon, and Back 穿过月亮的旅行, 2024) is conventional.
Two directors are credited at the end of the film, though only Xu in the final crawl. Given that reshoots are noted, it looks as if the second director mentioned, former Hong Kong actor Tang Jiahui 唐家辉, 45, who previously directed student romance Behind the Blue Eyes 不能流泪的悲伤 (2023), may have been brought in to finish the job. Under its original title, 你不来，我不老 (literally, “If You Don’t Come, I Won’t Age”), the screenplay co-won the top prize at the 2023 Xia Yan Cup 夏衍杯, an annual award for unproduced scripts.
CREDITS
Presented by China Film Creative (Beijing) (CN), China Film (CN), China Film (Beijing) Studios. Produced by China Film (CN).
Script: Wu Bing, Lin Qinqin. Photography: Zhang Qianwei. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai]. Music: Jérôme Leroy. Music supervision: Yu Fei. Art direction: Liang Zixian. Costume design: You Caixin. Styling: Gao Xianling. Sound: Wu Jiang, Jiao Chuanglei. Action: Luo Lixian [Bruce Law]. Visual effects: Li Cheng.
Cast: Ci Sha (Qiao Mingzhuang), He Chaolian (Shandi/Sandy), Zeng Zhiwei [Eric Tsang] (Shen Ji), Liu Yichun (Bian Xiaorong), Huang Zongze (Fa), Xu Yuexiang (Ying), Bai Shu (Yuguo, roommate of Qiao Mingzhuang), Ma Zuikeng (Andy), Ai Wei (Wen, fortune teller at temple), Cao Chengfang (He Xiaolian, TV newscaster), Xia Li’ao (Daniel), Bai Zhijie (David), Su Ningzhen (Du), Liu Ran (Fang), Liu Cong (postman), Xu Xinyun (Shen Ji employee).
Release: China, 14 Dec 2024.