Forever Young 2015
栀子花开2015
China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 102 mins.
Director: He Jiong 何炅.
Rating: 6/10.
Formulaic campus comedy-drama has a few offbeat touches and doesn’t take itself at all seriously.
STORY
A university, somewhere in southern China, summer 2015. Yan Xi (Zhang Huiwen), Gao Meixue (Li Xin’ai), Xia Jingjing (Zhang Yuxi) and Chen Jiamiao (Song Yi) have spent four years together as roommates and dance students, and hope to go on to study at the Paris Opera Ballet together as well. The girls are friendly with four boys who make up a band and hope to go on to a career in music: singer Xu Nuo (Li Yifeng), drummer Zhang Zaichang (Wei Daxun), Kang Jian (Du Tianhao) and An Di (Jiang Jinfa). When Yan Xi breaks the news to Xu Nuo that she’s going to Paris, he’s not happy. The girls’ ballet teacher, Miss Han (Li Wen), confides in Xu Nuo that none of them have been accepted by the Paris Opera Ballet, though they have not been told yet. Meanwhile, Yan Xi discovers that the other girls have explored other options and won’t be going to Paris; angry at the breakdown in their “sisterhood”, Yan Xi storms off. Xu Nuo can’t bring himself to tell any of them that they failed to get into the Paris Opera Ballet; and then Gao Meixue, Xia Jingjing and Chen Jiamiao are all killed in a taxi accident one night. Full of remorse, Yan Xi has a month to come up with a replacement for the Dance of the Cygnets that the four girls were going to perform at the university’s Dream Night Graduation Party. But then she falls during training and has to have a foot operation. So Xu Nuo proposes to his three pals that they perform the Dance of the Cygnets themselves. The start training in secret, without Yan Xi’s knowledge but with the help of Miss Han.
REVIEW
Mega-popular Mainland TV presenter-singer He Jiong 何炅, 42 – a longtime co-host of Hunan Satellite TV’s entertainment show Happy Camp 快乐大本营 – makes an okay directing debut with Forever Love 2015 栀子花开2015, a formulaic campus comedy-drama with a few offbeat touches. The most offbeat (and neatly dovetailing with He’s rather louche TV image) would seem to be the main plot of four male students dressing up in tutus and secretly training to perform the Dance of the Cygnets from Swan Lake – a kind of spin on The Full Monty (1997) but, as one character says, “this is dancing, not stripping!” In fact, that’s nowhere near as offbeat as the film’s construction, which starts as a happy/teary story of four BFF ballet students about to graduate and study in Paris and then, after half an hour, kills three of them off and lands the fourth in hospital. Thereafter, the film becomes a male affair as, to honour their friends’ memory, four band musicians decide to perform the girls’ dance at a big graduation party in a month’s time.
The four scriptwriters, led by Ao Li 傲立 (My Old Classmate 同桌的妳, 2014), hardly try to justify the unlikely plot in any logical way, presumably reckoning that the film’s young female audience, there to see singer-actor Li Yifeng 李易峰 fooling around in tights and ballet class, doesn’t really care anyway. The surprise is how He and his cast prevent the film from becoming just an exercise in camp, especially given Li’s rather metrosexual looks. In fact, the 29-year-old singer comes out of it rather well. Released in summer 2015, the film was his first leading role, and he went on to perform credibly opposite Yang Mi 杨幂 in Fall in Love Like a Star 怦然星动 (2015) and Feng Xiaogang 冯小刚 in gangster drama Mr. Six 老炮儿 (2015). In Forever, he shows a likeable personality that doesn’t get in the way of the ensemble and on a phsyical level is even marginally believable. Cleverly, the film doesn’t make the boys’ performance the sine qua non of the finale and, to further “normalise” the rehearsal scenes, Chinese American singer Li Wen 李玟 [Coco Lee] makes an extensive (and convincing) guest appearance as a ballet teacher who coaches them.
Though she doesn’t have much of a role in the second half, Beijing Dance Academy graduate Zhang Huiwen 张慧雯, 22, who played the ballet-dancing daughter in Coming Home 归来 (2014), is again fine here without exuding any special star quality. By not taking itself at all seriously – and staying on a rarified level by avoiding the kids’ home lives – Forever manages to stretch itself across 100 minutes quite easily. The slick technical package – photography by China’s Chen Cheng 陈诚 (The Secret 消失爱人, 2016), editing by Hong Kong veteran Zhang Jiahui 张嘉辉 [Cheung Ka-fai], executive direction by Hong Kong’s very experienced Chen Weiqiang 陈伟强 – is a great help, too. Shooting took place in Guangzhou, though the university is never identified.
The film has no connection with the 2014 release, Forever Young 怒放之青春再见. The Chinese title means “Gardenias Blossom”, and is the same as the song by Wu Luan 吴娈 that He made famous as a singer back in 2004. With the title, and He and Li’s names attached, the production managed to hawl a sizeable RMB379 million on release.
CREDITS
Presented by Century Pictures (CN), China Culture Industrial Investment Fund (CN), Huayi Brothers Media (CN), Heyi Pictures (CN), Zhizi Huakai (Tianjin) Cultural Communication (CN), Jiangsu Wenhua Dongrun Film & TV Culture (CN), Omnijoi Pictures (CN), Beijing Yixiang Tiankai Media (CN), Beijing Angel Plus Creative Investment Management (CN), Beijing Guangcai Century Cultural Art (CN). Produced by Century Pictures (CN), Zhizi Huakai (Tianjin) Cultural Communication (CN).
Script: Ao Li, Nan Luo, Gong Jia, Yang Xiao. Photography: Chen Cheng. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai]. Music direction: Li Ruotian. Art direction: Li Jingze. Styling: Zhao Tong. Syling advice: Zhao Zixuan. Sound: Zhou Lei. Executive direction: Chen Weiqiang.
Cast: Li Yifeng (Xu Nuo), Zhang Huiwen (Yan Xi), Jiang Jinfa (An Di), Du Tianhao (Kang Jian), Zhang Yuxi (Xia Jingjing), Wei Daxun (Zhang Zaichang), Li Xin’ai (Gao Meixue), Zhang Yunlong (Wei), Song Yi (Chen Jiamiao), Chai Ge (Ji Yan), Wang Youshuo (Si Wen), Li Wen [Coco Lee] (Han, ballet teacher).
Release: China, 10 Jul 2015.