Love in the 1980s
1980年代的爱情
China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 104 mins.
Director: Huo Jianqi 霍建起.
Rating: 4/10.
The scenery scores over the human drama in a tale of re-ignited first love.
STORY
Gongmu township, central China, autumn 1982. After graduating from university, and as part of his “grassroots” government training, Guan Yubo (Lu Fangsheng) is assigned to the remote, mountainous township of the Tujia ethnic minority to work as its publicity/education officer. Xiang Yu’e (Li Shutong), his girlfriend from college, has to remain in the city. Guan Yubo works directly under the local party secretary (Ma Shuliang), whose current government challenge is to meet birth-control quotas. Feeling lonely, Guan Yubo befriends an old cook, Tian (Ma Guoqing), who used to be a teacher but whose career was destroyed by an anti-rightist campaign. One day Guan Yubo bumps into his secret first love from high school, Cheng Liwen (Yang Caiyu), who happens to be in the township working in a local shop. She’s polite but uncommunicative. Unlike Guan Yubo, she didn’t manage to get into university, due to her family’s political problems. Later, the two of them visit her father (Li Hucheng), who now lives alone in the mountains, making wooden birdcages. Gradually the two grow close but then, after six months, Guan Yubo’s term of service ends and it comes time for him to leave.
REVIEW
The mountainous scenery of Lichuan, a beauty spot in southwestern Hubei province, central China, is the star of Love in the 1980s 1980年代的爱情, a period exercise in undeclared love by veteran director Huo Jianqi 霍建起 that looks back wistfully to a simpler age. The widescreen photography of Shi Luan 石栾, who shot Huo’s biopic of writer Xiao Hong, Falling Flowers 萧红 (2012), creates one after another succulent panorama to seduce the eyes but the film is an empty vessel that doesn’t engage the emotions.
Significantly, the writing credits do not include the name of Huo’s regular collaborator, his wife Su Xiaowei 苏小卫 (aka Si Wu 思芜); instead, the script is credited to Zheng Shiping 郑世平, who wrote the original 2013 novel under his customary pen name Ye Fu 野夫. A writer-essayist from the Tujia ethnic minority who’s now in his early 50s, and himself a native of Lichuan, Zheng is previously credited with the TV drama series War of My Father (父亲的战争, 2009), but there’s precious little drama going on throughout Love. Zheng can’t be entirely held to blame: with rare exceptions (Life Show 生活秀, 2002; The Seal of Love 秋之白华, 2011), Huo’s films (Postmen in the Mountains 那人那山那狗, 1998; Nuan 暖, 2003; A Time to Love 情人结, 2004 ) have always been stronger on visuals than involving content.
Unlike, say, Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂树之恋 (2010) by Zhang Yimou 张艺谋, the film fails to create a compelling emotional drama that parallels the nostalgic “simplicity” of an earlier era. As a young university student is transferred to a six-month government job in a remote township, and re-meets a secret crush from his high-school days, political references to the period abound: a former teacher now working as a cook after being ruined by an anti-rightist campaign, the troubled political background of the girl’s family (which led to her never getting to university), and so on. But none of this informs the movie on an emotional level; instead the leading characters moon around, looking at the scenery and indulging in oblique conversations. An extended coda, set in the modern day, is simply clumsy.
In their first leading film roles, TV actor Lu Fangsheng 芦芳生, 36, and Yang Caiyu 杨采钰 (aka Oraphan Saithong), a 22-year-old, Bangkok-born Thai Chinese now based in Beijing, punch the clock but don’t create any memorable chemistry to sustain the dawdling running time.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Daying Entertainment (CN). Produced by Lichuan Longchuandiao Film & TV (CN), Enbili (Shanghai) Investment Consulting (CN).
Script: Zheng Shiping, Chen Yong. Novel: Ye Fu [Zheng Shiping]. Photography: Shi Luan. Editing: Yan Tao. Music: Valley Children, Xiao Juan. Folk music: He Peixuan. Art direction: Lv Feng. Costumes: Ni Shumin. Sound: Chao Jun, Lu Yu. Visual effects: Hao Bing (Tianjin North Film Group).
Cast: Yang Caiyu (Cheng Liwen), Lu Fangsheng (Guan Yubo), Li Shutong (Xiang Yu’e), Ma Shuliang (party secretary), Ma Guoqing (Tian), Zhu Yanmanzi (Xiaoya), Li Hucheng (Cheng Liwen’s father), Chai Wei (Han Ru, aged 13), Li Jiaqi (Han Ru, aged 5), Li Weihua (village official), Zhao Ying (auntie), Chen Ke (postman), Rao Guofeng (young Guan Yubo), Tian Dan (agency boss), Tan Xuecong (performer), Xiang Lingling (professional weeper).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Competition), 16 Jun 2015.
Release: China, 11 Sep 2015.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 30 Jun 2015.)