Adoring
宠爱
China, 2019, colour, 1.85, 106 mins.
Director: Yang Zi 杨子 [Larry Yang].
Rating: 7/10.
Likeable light comedy about pets and their eccentric owners avoids sentimentality for its own sake.
STORY
Qingdao city, Shandong province, northern China, summer 2019. Fund manager Li Xiang (Zhong Hanliang) is surprised at home by his girlfriend Qu Feifei (Yang Zishan), who discovers his big secret – that he has a pet pig called Little Bell. Shocked, she calls her friend, air hostess Fang Xin (Zhong Chuxi), a newlywed whose dog Haoqi is jealous of her always making love with her husband, book editor Zhao Le (Chen Weiting). Zhao Le’s illustrator, mysophobe An Ying (Kan Qingzi), who works from home, meets young reporter Luo Hua (Tan Jianci) whom she helps to rescue a stray kitten; afterwards he says they should share it 5-50 and then asks her, to her horror, to take care of it when he has to go away on work. Meanwhile, in the grounds of an apartment block, delivery boy Cao Wende befriends an abandoned dog that is being hunted by a colourful team of dog-catchers led by Xiuxian (Yu Ailei). In the block, lonely divorced father Gao Ming (Yu Hewei) prepares for the arrival of his teenage daughter Gao Mengmeng (Li Landi), who wants to take family cat Hulu/Angela back with her to New York against his will. Finally, junior high-schooler Jiang Nan (Zhang Zifeng), who has always helped blind fellow student Chen Leyun (Wu Lei) go to school each day, announces she has to move away with her parents; she says she’ll leave behind her dog Xiaozha after she’s trained it herself to become a guide dog. Qu Feifei beomes engaged to Li Xiang and tries her hardest to get used to living with Little Bell. When Gao Mengmeng arrives with her mother (Gong Beibi), Gao Ming pretends Hulu/Angela is out of control and not fit to be taken to the US. After two months’ training, Xiaozha is ready to be handed over to Chen Leyun, though he is still angry at Jiang Nan moving away. By now, An Ying has become attached to the kitten, conquering her fear of germs. Qu Feifei, however, still cannot get used to Little Bell, so Li Xiang agrees to give it to a pig farmer. Meanwhile, Cao Wende has won the trust of the abandoned dog, whose name is Barton, and learns about its back history.
REVIEW
Pitched somewhere between the social satire of Cala, My Dog 卡拉是条狗 (2003) and the inspirational cross-bonding of Little Q 小Q (2019), Adoring 宠爱 caters to the relatively recent love affair with pets by the Mainland’s burgeoning middle class, among whom ownership is growing by some 15% a year. Belatedly catching up with Japan, films featuring cuddly animals (real or CGI) have become a staple in China – witness Little Q, a remake of Quill クイール (2004) – and, despite its icky title, Adoring has a refreshingly light comedic tone that stays clear of sentimentality for its own sake. It’s as much about the kind of people who own pets as about the pets themselves, interweaving half-a-dozen stories set among a seaside community in Qingdao city, northern China. With popular comedian Xu Zheng 徐峥 as creative producer 监制, it took a robust RMB684 million, six times the hawl of Little Q.
Though Xu’s style of humour – puncturing a serious mood with a laugh – is sometimes evident, most of the kudos seems due to director/co-writer Yang Zi 杨子 [Larry Yang], a commercial film-maker (Stephon Marbury biopic My Other Home 我是马布里, 2017) who made a notable detour into artier stuff with Mountain Cry 喊•山 (2015). Yang has turned in a smooth-looking package, with no-flab editing, sharp and summery photography by d.p. Ma Wenneng 马文能, a warm but restrained score by regular French composer Nicolas Errèra, and a script with Ran Jia’nan 冉甲男 (Painted Skin: The Resurrection 画皮II, 2012; The Monkey King 2 西游记之孙悟空三打白骨精, 2016) that easily slides back and forth between the six stories prior to uniting everyone – most of whom, it turns out, know each other – in the finale.
The animals in question are mostly dogs, plus a couple of cats and a pet pig. But the real focus is the owners (and their eccentricities): two newlyweds whose dog gets jealous whenever they try to have sex, a mysophobic book illustrator who’s drawn out of her shell by an adopted kitten, a goofy delivery boy who helps out an abandoned dog, a divorced father who tries to prevent his daughter taking a cat back to the US, a junior-high student who retrains her dog to help out a blind fellow student she likes (the most formulaic story), and a fund manager who’s kept a guilty secret from his girlfriend.
Smokey Mainland actress Zhong Chuxi 钟楚曦 (Dude’s Manual 脱单告急, 2018) and Hong Kong actor-singer Chen Weiting 陈伟霆 (more often in blah roles) are especially lively here as the perpetually horny newlyweds, and Hong Kong’s Zhong Hanliang 钟汉良 [Wallace Chung] and Mainlander Yang Zishan 杨子姗 ditto as the pig-lover and his stressed-out partner. Each story is neatly resolved, but it’s the one between the mysophobe and her young reporter friend, quietly played by Mainlanders Kan Qingzi 阚清子 and Tan Jianci 檀健次, that is especially touching, without being gooey.
Yang Zi favourites Yu Ailei 余皑磊 and Lang Yueting 郎月婷 (the husband and wife in Mountain Cry) cameo as a dog-catcher and the local vet, while producer Xu pops up in the end titles humourously plugging his forthcoming release, Lost in Russia 囧妈 (2020).
Though one can occasionally spot an animal looking at its off-camera trainer instead of the actor, the co-ordination between pets and people is generally well handled by US specialist David Allsberry (Babe: Pig in the City, 1998; Stuart Little, 1999; Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, 2009) with an acceptable amount of humanisation.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Joy Leader Culture Communication (CN), Beijing Hairun Pictures (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN). Produced by Beijing Hairun Pictures (CN).
Script: Ran Jia’nan, Yang Zi [Larry Yang]. Script planning: He Keke, Zhang Xiaobei, Yin Lichuan, Lv Xu. Photography: Ma Wenneng. Editing: Zhang Chao, Li Nanyi, Yang Zi [Larry Yang]. Music: Nicolas Errèra. Art direction: Liu Li’na. Styling: Li Wenqi. Sound: Wang Yanwei, Feng Yanming, Song Shuo. Visual effects: Yang Qingyu (Heyday Kylin). Animal co-ordination: David Allsberry. Executive direction: Cao Lei.
Cast: Lang Yueting (Ai, vet), Li Qian (Weiwei), Zhang Zifeng (Jiang Nan), Wu Lei (Chen Leyun), Kan Qingzi (An Ying), Tan Jianci (Luo Hua), Yang Zishan (Qu Feifei), Zhong Hanliang [Wallace Chung] (Li Xiang), Zhong Chuxi (Fang Xin), Chen Weiting (Zhao Le), Guo Qilin (Cao Wende, delivery boy), Yu Hewei (Gao Ming), Li Landi (Gao Mengmeng, Gao Ming’s daughter), Yu Ailei (Xiuxian), Wang Ziyi (postman), Qian Jie (Chen Leyun’s mother), Gong Beibi (Gao Ming’s ex-wife), Gu Bin (wedding priest), ONER (boybanders), Wang Yang (high-school head), Zhao Yunzhuo (young Fang Xin).
Release: China, 31 Dec 2019.