Love on Credit

幸福额度

China, 2011, colour, 2.35:1, 92 mins.

Director: Chen Zhengdao 陈正道 [Leste Chen].

Rating: 7/10.

Taiwan actress Lin Zhiling strikes gold in a delightfully played Mainland rom-com.

STORY

Beijing, the present day. Twin sisters Li Xiaohong (Lin Zhiling) and Mo Xiaoqing (Lin Zhiling) lived apart when their parents split up: first-born Li Xiaohong, who always dreamed of a glamorous life and a wealthy husband, stayed with her mother and retained her mother’s family name, while Mo Xiaoqing, the quieter one who believed in love first and foremost, stayed with her father. Now grown up, they’re both still unmarried and haven’t been in touch for some years. Li Xiaohong, a publicist, has a wealthy married lover, Shi Kang (Ma Weijiang), who won’t get a divorce; Mo Xiaoqing, recently jobless, lives with her impoverised longtime partner Jiang Cheng (Liao Fan) who always talks about marriage. When Jiang Cheng is cheated out of his savings by his best friend (Yu Jian), Mo Xiaoqing splits up with him but continues to share the same flat. Meanwhile, Li Xiaohong, in a fit of drunken desperation one evening, walks out on Shi Kang, gets to know the wealthy Zhang Quan (Chen Kun) in a hotel bar and ends up in the latter’s room. The two sisters meet by chance when Mo Xiaoqing applies for a job at Li Xiaohong’s PR company, and Li Xiaohong, urging Mo Xiaoqing to throw off her mousy lifestyle and adopt the credit-card life, invites her to a trendy party. There she meets girl-shy executive Shen Tao (Yang Youning), son of a powerful Asian businesswoman (Zhang Xiaoyan). Without telling him about Jiang Cheng, Mo Xiaoqing starts dating Shen Tao. Meanwhile, Zhang Quan pursues Li Xiaohong with a proposal of marriage, though she stresses she loves only his platinum credit card, not him.

REVIEW

After an impressive start with ghost movie The Heirloom 宅变 (2005) and sexual-identity drama Eternal Summer 盛夏光年 (2006), Taiwan director Chen Zhengdao 陈正道 [Leste Chen] bounces back after a five-year gap with the slick Mainland rom-com Love on Credit 幸福额度. Co-produced by and starring Mainland heartthrob Chen Kun 陈坤, but essentially a vehicle for Taiwan supermodel-turned-actress Lin Zhiling 林志玲 in a double role as twin sisters, it’s a familiar tale of money vs love in New China that’s raised above the norm by Lin’s surprisingly smart performance(s) and confident direction by Chen Zhengdao of his most high-powered cast to date.

Now 37 but looking 10 years younger, Lin, who was decorative but no more in her early films (Red Cliff 赤壁, 2008; The Treasure Hunter 刺陵, 2009) and only started to show promise as an actress in her glammed-down role in Welcome to Shamatown 决战杀马镇 (2010), is the revelation of the movie. Playing twin sisters divided by their attitudes towards love (material girl vs serious girl), she manages not only to look significantly different, to the point where the viewer almost forgets it’s the same actress, but also, without any grandstanding, to create two characters who are emotionally complementary. Helped by special effects and cutting (by Hong Kong ace Li Dongquan 李栋全 [Wenders Li]) that are silkily smooth, the highly schematic idea works on an emotional level simply because it looks so natural.

After laying out its cards quite clearly at the start (“Do we want a prince or a big house, happiness or pretty clothes?”), the script, co-written by Taiwan’s Wang Jiyao 王纪尧 (Eternal Summer), spreads out a wide raft of characters that keep the movie going when not a lot is actually developing on screen. It’s a film that’s sustained by Lin’s performance(s) and those of her co-actors, rather than by any plot revelations or surprising moral discoveries, and by a series of lovely individual scenes in which they spark off each other. Chen Kun, Liao Fan 廖凡 (Ocean Flame 一半海水一半火焰, 2008) and Taiwan’s Yang Youning 杨祐宁 (Formula 17 17岁的天空, 2004) are okay as the various men in the sisters’ lives, but it’s the situational comedy that resonates most: Yang’s girl-shy mother’s boy on his first date, nervously changing tables; Chen’s smooth rich-kid proposing, or presenting his highly dysfunctional family at dinner; and a couple of nicely written scenes with veteran Taiwan actress Zhang Xiaoyan 张小燕 as a self-assured, no-nonsense businesswoman.

Constructed not so much in three acts but more in one continuous act, the screenplay only puts a foot wrong prior to the finale, with a series of sudden decisions by the sisters that seem manufactured by the writers rather than organically growing out of the material. Otherwise, it’s a smooth ride along familiar rails, enhanced by neat little touches along the way.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Galloping Horse Film (CN), K Pictures (Beijing) Cultural Dissemination (CN).

Script: Wang Jiyao, Zuo Er, Chen Zhengdao [Leste Chen]. Photography: Jiang Minzhong. Editing: Li Dongquan [Wenders Li]. Music: Gong Yuqi. Music supervision: Lin Weizhe. Production design: Peng Weimin. Costume design: Zhou Xiangyu. Sound: Zhu Xiaojia.

Cast: Lin Zhiling (Li Xiaohong/Amy; Mo Xiaoqing), Chen Kun (Zhang Quan), Liao Fan (Jiang Cheng, Mo Xiaoqing’s boyfriend), Yang Youning (Shen Tao/Tony), Zhang Xiaoyan (Guo Yingying, Shen Tao’s mother), Yu Jian (Li Meng, Jiang Cheng’s friend), Yao Yi’ai (Zhang Quan’s stepmother), Li Fengxu (Zhang Quan’s mother), Gao Bin (Zhang Quan’s father), Ma Weijiang (Shi Kang, Li Xiaohong’s married lover), Jiang Fan (watch saleswoman), Li Mengxia (priest), Jiang Yiyi (young Mo Xiaoqing), Lv Si (young Li Xiaohong), Hu Changjie (auctioneer), Wang Zhen (waiter who stops fight), Song Jiahao (barman).

Release: China, 20 Oct 2011.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 14 Nov 2011.)