Fall in Love Like a Star

怦然星动

China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 97 mins.

Director: Chen Guohui 陈国辉 [Tony Chan].

Rating: 7/10.

Super-slick Shanghai romance is sustained by its basic simplicity and the leads’ natural chemistry.

STORY

Shanghai. In 2010, while working as a roadie for rock band Walking XL, wannabe singer Su Xingyu (Li Yifeng) is sacked for insubordination, but he and girlfriend Tian Xin (Yang Mi) swear they’ll become successful – he as a singer-songwriter and she as his agent. He then goes abroad to study in the UK for two years. Five years later, in 2015, he has become a major star, managed by top agent Mei (Chen Shu) at ChinaHR.com. On her first day working at the agency, Tian Xin bumps into him in the foyer and remembers how, three years earlier, she had ended their relationship by phone, as he was still washing dishes in London and she saw no future for them. At an agency meeting that day, Su Xingyu has a major row with Mei, who’s arranged for him to star in a youth movie he doesn’t want to do; Su Xingyu is convinced of his own artistry and says he doesn’t need to be packaged in this way. Mei dares him to pick anyone else in the office to be his agent instead, and he chooses Tian Xin. To prove she can easily create another big star, Mei signs singer Gao Mang (Zhang Yunlong) and then arranges for her old friend, renowned record producer Song Ming (Hu Yanbin), to record him. Tian Xin tries to snag Song Ming to record Su Xingyu, but he turns her down. However, an accident while filming a commercial with a hot-air balloon turns into a major publicity event for Su Xingyu. Tian Xin tells Su Xingyu that she never stopped loving him; but now she’s his agent, she must think of his career and keep their relationship professional. An old friend, food writer Chen Xuan (Wang Yaoqing), starts courting her, so Su Xingyu starts going out with Hao Meili (Dilraba Dilmurat), an actress from the same management company who’s always fancied him. Meanwhile, Mei is still plotting Tian Xin’s downfall.

REVIEW

The ability of writer-director Chen Guohui 陈国辉 [Tony Chan] to spin 90 minutes of painless and brainless entertainment out of almost nothing is even more strikingly on display in Fall in Love Like a Star 怦然星动, another Shanghai-set piece of romantic fluff that has even less substance than Chen’s previous Bride Wars 新娘大作战 (2015). Where the latter showcased actresses Ni Ni 倪妮 and Yang Ying 杨颖 [Angelababy] as spatting BFFs, Star is a vehicle for actor-singer Li Yifeng 李易峰 and actress Yang Mi 杨幂 – both popular with Mainland teenies – as a pop star and his loving agent. Shot in Shanghai a year after Bride Wars, and with almost identical key crew, Star was released only a few months afterwards, making 2015 a strong return by the 48-year-old Hong Kong-born, New York-raised director (Hot Summer Days 全城热恋  热辣辣, 2010; Love in Space 全球热恋, 2011) after several years’ absence. More surprisingly, Star earned almost as much as Bride Wars at the box office, despite having a less starrier cast and much less hype.

Though d.p. Liang Shengji 梁盛基, editor Li Dongquan 李栋全 [Wenders Li], art director Huang Jialun 黄家伦 and stylist Ma Tianyou 马天佑 – all from Hong Kong – assure another slick ride through Shanghai’s fashionable spots and watering-holes, it takes more than just technique to keep a ball as flimsy as this in the air for an hour and a half. Where Bride Wars made up in manic energy what it lacked in lead chemistry, Star develops an empathy between Yang and Li that’s much less mechanical and even manages to develop over time. With the exception of the son role in Mr. Six 老炮儿 (2015), Li, 28, has only played musicians on the big screen (Love Sick 恋爱恐慌症, 2011; Forever Young 2015 栀子花开2015, 2015), but he still shows fractionally more personality than most of the pretty-boy singers of his generation, and gets to show it in the film’s second half. Top-billed Yang, now 29 and slowly moving into older roles, looks convincingly more mature here as the singer’s kind-of-ex who’s now his agent, and is confident enough to give her less experienced screen mate plenty of space.

As with Bride Wars, Chen and returning co-writer Xu Yiliang 徐伊亮 don’t pretend Star is anything more than it appears and, with even less plot this time, it’s the film’s complete simplicity and lack of pretension that accounts for the small lump in the viewer’s throat at the end. TV/theatre actress Chen Shu 陈数 (the bitchy diva in psychodrama The Second Woman 情谜, 2012) gives the film some mature heft as a ball-breaking agent, and Taiwan actor-comedian Wang Yaoqing 王耀庆 ditto as a smooth suitor; but it’s Yang’s ingenuous performance that sustains the movie through one after another cliche of romantic drama. A Strauss waltz over the end titles neatly wraps up the whole confection in celebratory style and an NG at the very, very end is worth sticking around for, to see the cast in more relaxed form.

CREDITS

Presented by H&R Century Pictures (CN), Jaywalk Media Entertainment (CN), Youth Enlight Pictures (CN). Produced by Jaywalk Media Entertainment (CN).

Script: Chen Guohui [Tony Chan], Xu Yiliang, Lin Liying, Yang Jia. Photography: Liang Shengji. Editing: Li Dongquan [Wenders Li]. Music: Zhong Entai [Eddie Chung]. Art direction: Huang Jialun. Styling: Ma Tianyou. Sound: Wu Hongjuan, Gao Yuguang, Zheng Yingyuan [Phyllis Cheng]. Visual effects: Huang Zhijie, Huang Zhiheng [Henri Wong] (Parabucks).

Cast: Yang Mi (Tian Xin), Li Yifeng (Su Xingyu), Chen Shu (Mei), Wang Yaoqing (Chen Xuan), Zhang Yunlong (Gao Mang), Dilraba Dilmurat (Hao Meili), Hu Yanbin (Song Ming), Jin Shijia (Bing), Zhang Zheng (Xiaopang), Liu Zezhou (agency boss), Zhang Xingyu (drunken stylist), Zhao Wenjie (make-up artist), Liang Shimin (photographer), Wang Xiaoqing (maid), Gao Anyi (commercial director), Li Xinze (musicvideo director), Li Quanyou (director), Ge Xiaoqian (awards show MC), Liu Yapeng (male presenter), Wang Anqi (female presenter), Yang Junyu (sound recordist), Zhang Jing (Jin, wife of recording company boss), Leng Haiming (Johnnie), Su Xin (Helen, fashion writer).

Release: China, 3 Dec 2015.