Go Lala Go!
杜拉拉升职记
China, 2010, colour, 2.35:1, 102 mins.
Director: Xu Jinglei 徐静蕾.
Rating: 7/10.
Glossy tale of a working girl’s rise benefits from actress-director Xu Jinglei’s offbeat lead performance.
STORY
Beijing, 2003. Making a fresh start, and believing that plain hard work will pay off, 27-year-old Du Lala (Xu Jinglei) joins the China office of high-powered US company DG Technology as an assistant in its personnel department. She is soon befriended by Helen (Wu Peici), secretary of sales director Wang Wei (Huang Lixing), and later by the workaholic Wang Wei himself, after he ends his clandestine office affaire with assistant personnel manager Rose (Mo Wenwei). Du Lala shows initiative when CEO Howard (Peter Loehr) orders the office to be refurbished and, in her first big step up the ladder, becomes Wang Wei’s (very) personal assistant. Unlike him, however, she finds it hard to separate her private and professional lives.
REVIEW
Adapted from the hugely successful novel Lala’s Promotion 杜拉拉升职记 by the pseudonymous Li Ke 李可 (who once worked in the China office of IBM), the fourth movie by Xu Jinglei 徐静蕾 as lead actress and director is an unashamedly commercial enterprise, with none of the artistic ambitions of her previous outings like A Letter from an Unknown Woman 一个陌生女人的来信 (2004) or Dreams May Come 梦想照进现实 (2006). Using only part of the original 2007 novel, Xu and her co-writers have come up with a super-slick date movie – lots of jazzy split-screen, pacey editing, and even a scenic diversion to Pattaya, Thailand – that concentrates less on office politics and more on the central romance between Du Lala and her boss Wang Wei, with all the usual conflicts between work and private life. As pure entertainment, Go Lala Go! 杜拉拉升职记 goes out of its way not to be preachy in any way, with only a discreet final message for New China that (maybe) career success isn’t everything.
With virtually no background on any of the characters (Du Lala has a younger brother, Manyi, but that’s almost all that’s known even about her) and little attempt to create any real drama or conflict from office politics (plot reversals are entirely manufactured), the film floats on its performances, led by Xu’s offbeat lead. Now in her mid-30s, she looks a little too old for the early scenes of Du Lala in her late 20s but the problem becomes immaterial once her interpretation of the character takes over.
Neither saint nor bitch, charitable nor ruthless, Xu’s Du Lala is almost an old-fashioned, plain hard worker in an environment where yuppie values rule. She’s neither Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), nor Melanie Griffith in Working Girl (1988), nor even a female version of Robert Morse in How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1967) – though the film references all three movies, as well as the whole cycle of Hong Kong yuppie pictures of the 1980s. Xu’s laidback, slightly out-of-it performance gives the film a freshness that isn’t evident in the basic plot, which is newer for China than it is for the rest of the world.
Taiwan-born, US-raised singer-actor Huang Lixing 黄立行 [Stanley Huang] gives Wang Wei a slow-burning attractiveness that gradually builds some watchable chemistry between him and Xu. In her limited screen time, model-actress Wu Peici 吴佩慈, also from Taiwan, is lively, funny and touching as Du Lala’s office pal, Helen. And even the in-joke of casting CAA China head Peter Loehr 罗异 as the company CEO works, thanks to Loehr’s natural performance.
In a few years’ time, Go Lala Go! will look terribly of-its-era. But at the moment it’s up there – along with last year’s Sophie’s Revenge 非常完美 (2009) – on the cusp of China’s new love affair with the rom-com.
CREDITS
Presented by China Film Group (CN), DMG Entertainment (CN).
Script: Wang Yun, Zhao Meng, Xu Jinglei. Novel: Li Ke. Photography: Jian Liwei. Editing: Zhang Jia. Music: Zhang Yadong, An Wei. Art direction: Lin Mu. Costume consultant: Patricia Field. Styling: Pan Yingyin, Zeng Jiayi [Olivia Tsang]. Sound: An Wei. Visual effects: Wu Wen (123 vfx group). Executive director: An Hanjin.
Cast: Xu Jinglei (Du Lala), Mo Wenwei [Karen Mok] (Meigui/Rose), Huang Lixing [Stanley Huang] (Wang Wei/David), Wu Peici (Hailun/Helen), Li Ai (Yi Wa/Eva), Wang Jingying (Mai Qi/Maggie), Jiang Kaitong (Xiaobao), Peter Loehr (Howard), Xiao Heping (Lister), Wu Jianxin (Li Wenhua/Albert), Song Ning (Manyi, Lala’s brother), Sun Zhuo (Qiu Jieke/Jack), Jiang Jinchao (Xiao Bao), Zheng Yanqi (Stella), Zhao Baogang (Du Lala’s ex-boss), Su Xiaoming (female interviewer), Wang Dayong (male interviewer), Song Paipan (shop owner).
Release: China, 15 Apr 2010.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 12 May 2010.)