Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

明天记得爱上我

Taiwan, 2013, colour, 2.35:1, 104 mins.

Director: Chen Junlin 陈骏霖 [Arvin Chen].

Rating: 7/10.

Romantic comedy of sexual confusion is strongly cast but tonally a little uneven.

STORY

Taibei, the present day. Weizhong (Ren Xianqi) has been married to Lan Feng (Fan Xiaoxuan) for nine years and they have a son, Wan (Zhang Weining), aged six. Lan Feng is always late arriving for work because of looking after their son, and the company is about to be merged with another, with redundancies likely. Weizhong has been working at an optician’s for the past eight years and one day the owner, Zhang (Xiaoye), says he wants to take things easy after dedicating 30 years of his life to the business. He appoints Weizhong as the small shop’s manager. At a pre-wedding banquet for Weizhong’s younger sister, travel agent Mandy (Xia Yuqiao), and her fiance Sansan (Shi Jinhang), Weizhong bumps into a friend, gay wedding photographer Stephen (Ke Yulun), whom he hasn’t seen for years. Stephen is surprised to hear that Weizhong has a wife and a child, as he always used to be gay. Despite Weizhong’s insistence that he is now a happily married man, Stephen says he won’t blow his friend’s “cover”, especially as he himself is technically married to his business manager, lesbian Xu Jiazhen (Li Weiwei). One day, while shopping in a supermarket, Mandy has a panic attack about her forthcoming wedding, dumps Sansan, and goes into hiding. Meanwhile, Lan Feng, who is under pressure from her parents to have another child as she is already 38, is taken by her mother (Gao Yushan) to a fortune-teller. At his shop, Weizhong again meets Thomas (Huang Jiale), a Hong Kong airline steward who’s come to pick up his new glasses. As he fits the glasses on Thomas, Weizhong suddenly has a fantasy of kissing him.

REVIEW

Full of likeable performances and marbled with moments of charming whimsy, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? 明天记得爱上我 is less richly plotted than the impressive first feature, Au revoir Taipei 一页台北 (2010), by American Chinese writer-director Chen Junlin 陈骏霖 [Arvin Chen], but is still equally easy to digest. Unlike his all-through-the-night previous film, Tomorrow is a more straightforward rom-com, interweaving three emotional pairings that span a broad sexual range. Taibei-metrosexual to its fingertips, it’s sure to be dubbed a “gay movie” (especially in the West) but is really nothing of the kind – and may even get a pasting from card-carrying gay viewers for its portrayal of homosexuality as perhaps just a passing phase. In fact, it’s a cute, rather sweet movie about romantic confusion, professing no deep analysis of sexuality, that’s headlined by a major star (Taiwan singer-actor Ren Xianqi 任贤齐 [Richie Ren]) and aimed at mainstream audiences. Local advertising for the film has gone out of its way to disguise the gay elements, with no hint in the poster or trailer.

Playing up his tendency to look ingenuously out-of-it, Ren is well cast as Weizhong, a quiet, middle-aged optician who’s happily married and has a young son. At a pre-wedding banquet for his younger sister, Weizhong bumps into an old friend, the screamingly camp Stephen, who’s surprised at Weizhong’s situation. “Don’t worry, I won’t blow your cover,” he says. “What cover?” says Weizhong. “I’m married”. Soon, however, Weizhong is staring into the eyes of a handsome Hong Kong customer and getting romantic stirrings. Parallel to this, and getting an almost equal amount of screen time, is the story of Weizhong’s spacey sister (nicely played by TV actress Xia Yuqiao 夏于乔), who gets a bad attack of pre-wedding nerves, dumps her dopey fiance, and holes up in her flat with pot noodles and a South Korean TV drama. As both brother and sister try to sort out their emotional chaos, their respective partners also end up equally confused as to what the hell is going on.

Tomorrow has none of Au revoir‘s dense, criss-crossing structure but it’s still an ambitious undertaking on a more emotional level. Though there are many fine moments, Chen’s script and direction don’t quite manage to sustain either an even rom-com tone as the film bounces between the various strands or a thorough-going feeling of irreality that would make the occasional slides into fantasy seem smoother. It’s the kind of script that looks like it needed one more polish; as it is, a fuller and more descriptive score by Xu Wen 徐文, an American Chinese jazz composer who did Au revoir, would have helped to create an overall mood. It’s individual touches rather than the film as a whole that one comes away remembering: Weizhong’s boss (industry veteran Xiaoye 小野, in a cameo) floating away into retirement, the sister’s duncy fiance (Mayday 五月天 lead guitarist Shi Jinhang 石锦航) staging an elaborate reconciliation, the sister herself talking to her soap pin-up (South Korea’s Yi Hae-u 이해우 | 李海佑), or Weizhong’s wife (singer-actress Fan Xiaoxuan 范晓萱) launching into the title song.

However, it’s a tribute to the performances that the movie does pack a final punch, with Weizhong’s touching speech and the nicely open ending. Though her character is a little underwritten, Fan shows a quiet abstraction that fits well with Ren’s child-like emotional innocence, and she comes through strongly in the final scenes, which justify her playing a character who’s slightly older than she actually is (35). As equally cast against type as Ren is Shi, who is a major surprise as the sister’s good-hearted but bemused fiance. The rest of the cast is scattered with actors from Au revoir, including Yao Chunyao 姚淳耀 as a wedding MC and Ke Yulun 柯宇纶 as the leader of the film’s campy “chorus”.

Technical credits are smooth, with colourful work by d.p. Xia Shaoyu 夏绍虞 and okay editing by Los Angeles-based Justin Guerrieri (Au revoir). The film’s production title was the rather more charming 下午茶 (literally, “Afternoon Tea”) though the new English one does make sense, especially given Fan’s sassy performance of the classic 1960 song.

CREDITS

Presented by 1 Production Film (TW), Central Motion Picture (TW). Produced by 1 Production (TW).

Script: Chen Junlin [Arvin Chen]. Photography: Xia Shaoyu. Editing: Justin Guerrieri. Music: Xu Wen. Production design: Huang Meiqing. Art director: Tu Shuofeng. Styling: Wei Xiangrong. Sound: Gao Weiyan, Zheng Xuzhi. Special effects: Zhang Jiawei. Choreography: Xiao Zhenjie, Zhang Chunhui, Chen Borui. South Korean unit: Yi Jong-ryeol (camera), Gim So-yeong (art), Gim Da-jeong (costumes).

Cast: Ren Xianqi [Richie Ren] (Weizhong), Fan Xiaoxuan (Lan Feng, Weizhong’s wife), Shi Jinhang (Sansan), Xia Yuqiao (Mandy, Weizhong’s younger sister), Ke Yulun (Zhang Tiancai/Stephen), Huang Jiale (Thomas), Zhang Weining (Wan, Weizhong’s son), Lan Juntian (Big Cheng, Lan Feng’s boss), Gao Yushan (Lan Feng’s mother), Tan Qingpu (Gong), Li Peizhen (Huilin), Yang Wenwen (Xiaoyi), Ye Xingchen (Mimi), Zhang Shaohuai (Simon, Stephen’s gay pal), Chen Zhiming (Ruirui/Ray-Ray, Stephen’s gay pal), Jian Yizhe (Ming, Stephen’s gay pal), Li Weiwei (Xu Jiazhen, Stephen’s “wife”), Zeng Zijian (Alan), KaKa (Linlin), Yi Hae-u (Jun, South Korean TV drama actor), Go Sang-heui (Min-yeong, South Korean TV drama actress), Xiaoye (Zhang, Weizhong’s boss), Ding Yetian (Wu, fortune teller), Wu Dingqian (sales rep), Ben (James), Yao Chunyao (wedding MC).

Premiere: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama), 9 Feb 2013.

Release: Taiwan, 3 Apr 2013.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 10 Feb 2013.)