I Like You More
倍儿喜欢你
China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 98 mins.
Director: Guo Dalei 郭大雷.
Rating: 5/10.
Odd-couple rom-com has strong leads and starts well, but the bumpy script loses direction in the second half.
STORY
Beijing, 2020. Unexpectedly, on 27 Oct, the rock band in which Fan Kui’en (Liu Yan) has been pursuing her dream for 10 years splits up after a concert. The other four members suddenly announce they’re leaving, as rock’n’roll is declining in popularity and they’re earning as little as RMB100 a gig. Fan Kui’en is devastated and feels left alone, as she is estranged from her father, Fan Yuzhou (Yang Xinming), who runs a restaurant called Secret Chicken Kitchen 中华秘鸡坊 from the family’s old-style courtyard house, raising his own chickens and cooking them according to a secret marinade recipe handed down through five generations of the family. Fan Kui’en still blames her father for the death of her mother (Zeng Li) a long time ago, and she can’t eat chicken without throwing up. However, she suddenly hears her father has had a stroke and is in hospital. Her father’s assistant, Chaozi (Yu Yang), also tells her the restaurant has been losing money; unless it can make a profit of RMB500,000 in the next three months, the bank will foreclose on its loan. Chaozi asks Fan Kui’en to come and help. While cleaning up, a customer, Gong Bao (Jia Bing), comes by, complaining of diarrhoea from a meal he had the previous day and demanding compensation. The truculent Gong Bao ends up staying in the family house with Fan Kui’en, who discovers he’s a Michelin-starred chef from Shenyang who studied Cordon Bleu cooking in France. She asks him to help out and prevent the bank from taking the house over. Gong Bao refuses, but then Yue Xiaomei (Shi Yufei), a restaurateuse friend of Fan Kui’en, tells him the true story of how Fan Yuzhou was not to blame for his wife’s death. Gong Bao eventually agrees to help Fan Kui’en out but says she’ll never make the money required if she doesn’t have the secret recipe for the marinade; instead, he fits out a snack van and successfully sells food from that, making RMB30,000 in one week. But then Fan Kui’en’s grouchy father is discharged from hospital and comes home.
REVIEW
An odd-couple rom-com between a restaurateur’s rock’n’roll daughter and a truculent French-trained chef, I Like You More 倍儿喜欢你 starts well, sags in the middle, and never really recovers. Set in a slightly irreal, studio-created Beijing, it’s nicely shot and designed and largely kept afloat by the chemistry between its main players, led by drily comic character actor Jia Bing 贾冰 and actress-presenter Liu Yan 柳岩. The faults all lie in the bumpy script by director Guo Dalei 郭大雷 and pseudonymous first-time scriptwriter Feng You Jin 风游津 (real name: Nie Jingjing 聂晶晶) which starts entertainingly but loses its sense of direction halfway through. Shot in late 2020 and finally released this spring, it bellyflopped with a nothing RMB5 million.
It’s the sixth feature by Shenyang-born Guo, 46, who started out with the crazed college-set semi-musical 青春荷尔蒙 (2012; literally, “Youth Hormones”), and then had a run of three interesting movies, all offbeat genre-spins: supernatural drama Apparition 恶灵之门 (2014), rom-com The Rise of a Tomboy 女汉真爱公式 (2016) and bozo comedy Once Upon a Time in the Northeast 东北往事 破马张飞 (2016), a love letter to the dorky humour of his home region. Those were all created with co-writer Xiong Jia’nan 熊嘉南, the last being his biggest box-office success with a respectable RMB106 million. After parting ways with Xiong, he made the canine comedy Hello My Dog 监狱计划 (2018); following that flop, he went MIA for a couple of years, during which time he shot I Like You More and also tried mounting other projects, including a follow-up to Northeast.
The film starts intriguingly, with Liu playing a member of a rock’n’roll group whose four colleagues quit after a concert. Estranged from her father, whom she still blames for the death of her mother years ago, she finds herself alone in life – until she hears her father is in hospital after a stroke and the small chicken restaurant he ran is deep in debt. Persuaded to help save it by her father’s assistant, she’s then accosted by a truculent customer (played by Jia) who claims he has food poisoning and demands compensation. Soon afterwards she discovers he’s actually an out-of-work Cordon Bleu chef who studied in France.
When Jia enters the film with his dry, straightfaced comedy, the scene looks set for an offbeat, odd-couple rom-com. Jia and Liu have excellent chemistry together, and when the woman’s equally grumpy father (Jin Shijie 金士杰 lookalike Yang Xinming 杨新鸣) is discharged from hospital and joins them it looks like becoming an even richer character comedy, as father and daughter resolve their differences with an outsider around. But it’s here that the script starts coming unglued, unable to sustain any forward momentum as it tries to handle all the threads. There’s a nice development when the father, unexpectedly, takes the chef’s side, hoping he’ll marry his daughter and take her off his hands; but with a bank deadline to meet to save the failing restaurant, the script is also faced with solving the problem of the secret marinade recipe. Caught between being an odd-couple rom-com, a family yarn and a food movie, I Like You More flails around in the second half – and isn’t helped by a manufactured finale centred on a neighbourhood music festival that tries to tie up all the loose ends (romance, rock music, chicken recipe etc.).
A busy supporting actor who always leaves his mark on a film – the train conductor in Lost in Russia 囧妈 (2020), police captain in Come Back Home 搜救 (2022), among many – Jia, 42, more than proves he can also carry a production in the lead. Though often cast in sexpot supporting roles in the past, Liu, also 42, has also shown she can handle bigger parts, notably the scheming beauty in I Belonged to You 从你的全世界路过 (2016) and the webcam girl at the centre of black rom-com My Dear Liar 受益人 (2019). Her only weakness here is that, despite the subtle efforts of d.p. Xue Gang 薛钢 and stylist Ren Manli 任曼丽, she occasionally looks too old for a role that’s around 30. Both players, however, have equally good chemistry with veteran character actor Yang, 66, often cast in slyly humorous roles (the priest in Dying to Survive 我不是药神, 2018; the father in Send Me to the Clouds 送我上青云, 2019). A raft of cameos by local names tries to disguise the script’s structural shortcomings.
Xue’s subtly burnished widescreen photography doesn’t try to make realistic the studio-created backstreets Beijing and courtyard-house setting, instead adding a slightly fairytale touch. The plangent rock-like score is sometimes effective but mostly not. The film was shot under the Chinese title 大乘娶亲 (literally, “Mahayana Gets Married”), which was then changed to 小妞“嫁”到 (“Young Girl Gets ‘Married'”) before its final title, which means “Terribly Fond of You.”
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Youying Yinghua Film & TV Media (CN), Tianjin Qitai Culture & Media (CN), Youying (Hainan) Film & TV Culture Media (CN), Xiamen Nibilu Pictures (CN), Xiamen Century Qitai Culture & Media (CN), Beijing Youying Lianpin Culture Media (CN), Tianjin Shiguang Yuansu Pictures (CN), Hemuhe (Beijing) International Film & TV Media (CN).
Script: Guo Dalei, Feng You Jin [Nie Jingjing]. Photography: Xue Gang. Editing: Zhang Wenting. Music supervision: Jiang Linfeng, Zhao Hengmin. Art direction: Sun Xiaobin. Styling: Ren Manli. Costumes: Wang Yan. Sound: Zhou Yi, Cheng Xiaolong. Food direction: Shao Liang. Executive direction: Zhang Xinbo.
Cast: Jia Bing (Gong Bao), Liu Yan (Fan Kui’en), Yang Xinming (Fan Yuzhou), Shi Yufei (Yue Xiaomei), Yu Yang (Chaozi), Chang Yuan (weightlifting trainer), Wei Xiang (Wei Sha’ni, music festival MC), E Jingwen (Tan Xizi, Gong Bao’s former girlfriend), Pan Binlong (Pan Dachai), Feng Lei (younger Fan Yuzhou), Zeng Li (Xiufang), Sun Yue (yoga trainer), Xiu Rui (wedding MC), Liu Tianzuo (groom), Fan Tiantian (bride), Chacha (Li Kai), Lin Qiyu (canteen Cui Hua), Pan Youtong (Xiaopanpan), Gao Dabo (Mo), Yang Dapeng (drunk man), Ma Dianbin (Yue), Li Xinliang (Wang Jianguo, Fan Kui’en’s former boyfriend), Huang Yuntong (Weiya), Zhang Zimo (young Fan Kui’en), Jiang Xinqi (Ming, vocalist), Guo Lixing (guitarist), Liu Zihao (keyboardist), Lu Moyi (drummer), Peng Shidi (Wanting), Zhang Yunfei (Xiaowei, nurse), Yue Cifei (first customer), He Jianing (daughter), Jiang Xiaohan (Xiaomao, waitress), Lv Dan (Huang Yingying), Zhao Shuzhen (Granny Zhou).
Release: China, 14 Apr 2023.