Great Wall My Love

追爱

China/Taiwan, 2011, colour, 1.85:1, 99 mins.

Director: Liu Yiming 刘怡明 [Emily Liu].

Rating: 7/10.

Engaging chemistry between its leads makes this odd-couple road movie a light delight.

STORY

Taibei, the present day. Yang Chunchun (Ying Cai’er), 28, is a romantic-manga artist who has come to distrust men. She also has always had an uneasy relationship with her father Yang Guobin (Gou Feng), a doctor. Her latest book, Don’t Be a Good Girl 别做好女孩, isn’t selling very well. When her 76-year-old father asks her to accompany him on a nostalgic trip back to his home village near Yanmen Pass, Shanxi province, China, and to visit the Great Wall for a final time, she declines. Yang Guobin goes on his own and en route gets to know a young private detective, Fang Mingdi (Tong Dawei), who is on an adultery case with his two assistants, Dahan (Chen Yilin) and Mutong (Dong Xuan). At Jiayuguan, the Great Wall’s western extremity, Yang Guobin has a heart attack and is hospitalised. Yang Chunchun and her mother Cai Yuqian (Ke Suyun) rush from Taibei to his bedside, where before dying Yang Guobin confesses the prime reason for the trip was to find his first love, Zhang Xiuqian, whom he left on the Mainland when he fled to Taiwan during the Civil War of the late 1940s. Yang Guobin leaves them with a photo of the young Zhang Xiuqian (Xiong Naijin) taken in Guangwu village, Shanyin county, in 1946. Yang Chunchun and her mother wonder whether Yang Guobin actually married Zhang Xiuqian at the time, and Yang Chunchun, feeling guilty over the hard time she always gave her father, determines to find Zhang Xiuqian to fulfil his last wish. Despite Yang Chunchun’s protests, her mother hires the smooth Fang Mingdi to accompany her. Yang Chunchun doesn’t trust him, and the bickering pair set out on a journey of discovery that will change them both.

REVIEW

The thorny problem of China-Taiwan reunification beats mildly below the surface of love-left-behind heartwarmer Great Wall My Love 追爱, ironically co-produced by the same Mainland company (Jiuzhou Audio-Video Publishing) that made the drama by Wang Quan’an 王全安 referencing the same theme, Apart Together 团圆 (2010). Both films start with an ageing man travelling back from Taiwan to China to meet the woman he deserted in the late 1940s when the Nationalists fled to Taiwan. But whereas in Wang’s movie they meet and chew over the past, in that by Liu Yiming 刘怡明 [Emily Liu] the search is taken up by the daughter when the man suddenly dies of a heart attack. As the daughter pairs with a young Mainlander as her guide, her father’s history becomes a problem inherited by the younger generation – one a young woman who was born in Taiwan and has never had any interest in visiting the Mainland, the other a young Mainlander who sees her as some kind of strange alien. As the woman discovers her family roots, the only big question in whether she’ll be able to swap the life she knows in Taiwan for a new one in her “native land”.

To the film’s credit, these undercurrents don’t get in the way of the entertainment. Great Wall My Love can be enjoyed simply as a road movie-cum-odd couple romance, with two highly engaging performances from its leads (China’s Tong Dawei 佟大为 and Taiwan-born Ying Cai’er 应采儿 [Cherrie Ying]) and bright, positive photography by ace Taiwan d.p. Lin Liangzhong 林良忠 [Jong Lin] (Eat Drink Man Woman 饮食男女, 1994) of locations in Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. An actor who hasn’t always justified his star status in movies, Tong (I Love You 我爱你, 2001; Lost in Beijing 苹果, 2007; The Flowers of War 金陵十三钗, 2011) here exudes a genuine charm as a young private detective who finds himself falling for his quirky client. But it’s Ying, whose career started promisingly in Hong Kong (Visible Secret II 幽灵人间II  鬼味人间, 2002; Throw Down 柔道龙虎榜, 2004) a decade ago but lost traction during the mid-noughties, who dominates the movie in perhaps the best performance of her career. Animated and sexy, and a natural comedienne, Ying makes the role of the mercurial Yang Chunchun far fresher and more substantial than it seems on paper – and likeable rather than annoying. Her chemistry with Tong is what drives the movie and prevents it from becoming just a glorified travelogue.

There’s not a mention of politics in the entire film. Instead, Great Wall is more about trust: on the surface, Yang Chunchun’s trust in men in general, though by extension Taiwan trust in mainland China. To the credit of director Liu and star Ying the tone is kept light while still managing emotional undertow, and even the supporting performances are deftly drawn in limited screen time (the mother of Ke Suyun 柯素云, the jealous work colleague of Dong Xuan 董璇). A champion of then-unfashionable mainstream film-making (Kangaroo Man 袋鼠男人, 1995) at a time when Taiwan cinema was trapped in an arty, festival ghetto of its own making, Liu, based in Beijing for several years, shows no signs of her 10-year lay-off since her last movie, Woman Soup 女汤 (1999). At a technical level it’s very smooth, and slides along effortlessly, even when not much is happening apart from the characters riffing off each other in beautiful locations.

Less use of manga-like animated inserts (which mark the film as rather chickflicky Taiwanese), and B&W flashbacks to the father’s Mainland youth, would have been better – and allowed the film to work itself out just in contemporary terms between the two leads. But at the end of the day Great Wall still packs an emotional clout thanks to its simple, unaffected charm and quiet humour. The Chinese title means “Chasing Love”.

CREDITS

Presented by Jiuzhou Audio-Video Publishing (CN), Turquoise Pictures (TW). Produced by Jiuzhou Audio-Video Publishing (CN), Turquoise Pictures (TW).

Script: Guan Yi, Jacqueline Austin, Qiu Dai Anping, Liu Yiming [Emily Liu]. Photography: Lin Liangzhong [Jong Lin]. Editing: Chen Bowen, Weng Yuhong. Editing supervision: Fu Xiuling. Music: Zeng Yan. Songs: Zeng Yan. Art direction: Li Jian, Chen Gufang. Costumes: Ma Defan. Sound: Ye Dan, Du Duzhi. Visual effects: Shi Minghui, Dai Xinping, Luo Hongjun. Animation: Zheng Junhuang.

Cast: Tong Dawei (Fang Mingdi), Ying Cai’er [Cherrie Ying] (Yang Chunchun), Gou Feng (Yang Guobin, Yang Chunchun’s father), Ke Suyun (Cai Yuqian, Yang Chunchun’s mother), Dong Xuan (Mutong, Fang Mingdi’s female assistant), Chen Yilin (Dahan, Fang Mingdi’s male assistant), Zhuang Qingning (Yang Hong, Yang Chunchun’s cousin), Liu Li (Zhang Xiuqian), Xiong Naijin (young Zhang Xiuqian), Wang Keda (young Yang Guobin), Zhao Youxuan (young Yang Chunchun), Tian Chunsheng (Yang, village head), Li Baozhen (Zhang, grandmother), Tian Chunhu (shepherd), Sun Yimu (Wang Jianzhong), Du Lili (Yang Guobin’s mother), Wang Dianyang (Yang Fei).

Release: China, 9 Dec 2011; Taiwan, 9 Mar 2012.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 5 Jan 2012.)