Welcome to My Side
欢迎来到我身边
China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 101 mins.
Director: Song Haolin 宋灏霖.
Rating: 6/10.
An odd-couple rom-com with a goofy premise that only just makes any sense is alway watchable thanks to its lead performances and precise direction.
STORY
Shanghai, the present day. After getting some dodgy electro-shock treatment from a backstreets doctor (Jiu Kong) to help him give up smoking, Chen Xiaozhou (Yu Shi) goes into a coma and wakes up three days later in hospital. There he develops a reaction to the colour yellow which makes him see people as large rubber ducks. In order to filter out the colour yellow, he gets a pair of red glasses. 593 Days Later. Lay-offs are due in the car manufacturer’s marketing department where Chen Xiaozhou works and soon he will have to prove himself with a 30-minute speech about a new car that’s due to be launched. The problem is that the car is yellow, and he isn’t allowed to wear his red glasses on stage. Meanwhile, he bumps into a friend, Liu Yiding (Huang Yan), who works with online influencers. Liu Yiding asks Chen Xiaozhou to stand in for him for an hour at a shoot with well-known food influencer Feng Jia’nan (Wang Yinglu). Chen Xiaozhou agrees, but the shoot goes on for days, Liu Yiding never turns up, and Chen Xiaozhou ends up playing the food taster. When he turns up at Feng Jia’nan’s flat for the final day of shooting, he’s told production has wrapped – and the flat is full of large plastic yellow ducks just like the ones he imagines. But these plastic ducks are real, not part of Chen Xiaozhou’s imagination. Contrary to her cute online image, Feng Jia’nan is curt, rude and unsmiling, but she agrees to give him a lift home. En route a yellow vehicle crosses in front of the car – but Chen Xiaozhou doesn’t suddenly start seeing plastic ducks. He later invites her to dinner and, while she’s with him at the table, he doesn’t have his yellow problem; but as soon as she leaves, he does. Liu Yiding tells Chen Xiaozhou he’ll just have to spend all his time with Feng Jia’nan. But how? Chen Xiaozhou proves popular with Feng Jia’nan’s followers, so she invites him to join the team as her regular taster. She’s now more friendly towards him but he still doesn’t tell her about his problem, despite getting jealous when he sees her getting on well with an older advertising producer (Zhai Yujia). However, without telling Chen Xiaozhou, Lu Yiding informs Feng Jia’nan about his friend’s problem.
REVIEW
A young man starts seeing large plastic ducks instead of people whenever the colour yellow crosses his sight in Welcome to My Side 欢迎来到我身边, which starts as a goofy light comedy about xanthophobia before gradually morphing into an odd-couple rom-com. It’s an offbeat approach to the genre by writers Miao Qian 缪倩 and Song Haolin 宋灏霖 that’s always watchable thanks to its lead performances – especially by Sichuan-born actress Wang Yinglu 王影璐 – even if the running time could easily lose 10 minutes and the plot’s resolution requires some major gymnastics in the script. Maybe because of the lack of any star names, this fourth theatrical feature by actor-turned-director Song received only a meh welcome at the box office (RMB45 million).
Born in Liaocheng, Shandong province, northern China, Song, now 46, studied at Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama and from 2002 started as a jobbing actor (under the name 宋昊林, pronounced exactly the same as 宋灏霖) in TV dramas and, from 2006, in films, none of them remarkable. After co-writing the feature Our Beijing Liaison Office 刘村驻京办 (2008, dir. Shi Chenfeng 史晨风), centred on a cook in Beijing who pretends to his hometown that he’s a big shot in the capital, Song gradually switched over to writing and directing, first with the half-hour comic fantasy 怪力乱城之角斗士 (2014, literally “City of Chaos: The Gladiator”), in which a lamb-loving young man (played by Song, in his final acting role) grows a pair of horns, and then with the strikingly mounted online feature Fatal Love 所爱非人 (2016), a futuristic tale of a couple in which the husband is replaced by an android. Song made his theatrical debut with Mr. Zhu’s Summer 猪太狼的夏天 (2017), a light comedy centred on a primary-school teacher, followed by the costume-fantasy buddy movie Soul Snatcher 赤狐书生 (2020), a Hong Kong co-production co-directed with Inner Mongolia-born Yi Liqi 伊力奇, and then Water Boys 五个扑水的少年 (2021), a very free remake of Japanese hit comedy Waterboys ウォーターボーイズ (2001) about some high-school males forming a synchronised swimming team.
None of Song’s films has been a big earner: Soul Snatcher, which took a respectable, if hardly stellar, RMB186 million, is still his most popular title. But though the scripts of some have been under-developed, they are all directed and shot with great precision and in a way that allows the actors to bloom. Apart from Fatal Love, which was largely told from the wife’s perspective, his other titles have all focused on male protagonists; Welcome to My Side is his first film to tell a rom-commy love story, even though it’s hardly a regular one.
Song’s co-scripter Miao has worked as a writer on most of his movies since Fatal Love; her input seems to be crucial, and has accounted for Song’s better films, especially Water Boys which actually improves on the Japanese version with a more focused plot and characters. In terms of originality, it doesn’t get much crazier than Welcome to My Side, which begins with Our Hero getting some electro-shock treatment from a dodgy backstreets doctor (Taiwan comedian Jiu Kong 九孔) to help him give up smoking. As a result, he goes into a coma; when he wakes up, he has some kind of visual allergy to the colour yellow which makes him see people as large plastic ducks. This pre-main title section basically sets up the plot device that brings the protagonists together: half-an-hour into the movie, Our Hero meets a young woman – a food influencer with a vlog – whose presence cures him of seeing plastic ducks. The only problem is that she’s curt, rude and unsmiling; and as soon as she leaves his presence, he starts seeing ducks again.
It’s a pretty out-there set-up for an odd-couple rom-com, but the second act works well thanks to the screen chemistry between Wang (good as the rookie lawyer in The Woman in the Storm 我经过风暴, 2023) and 27-year-old Yu Shi (Born to Fly 长空之王, 2023; Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms 封神第一部 朝歌风云, 2023). Previously not much more than a pretty face, newcomer Yu is okay here as the confused hero. However, in her first leading film role, it’s Wang, 24, with her killer put-down stare, who drives the relationship, even though her complex character of the moody food influencer is only partly explored.
It’s in the third act, when the writers have to come up with an explanation for everything, that the film starts taking on water. Apart from a flashback (“1,371 Days Earlier”) that stretches credulity, the final 20 minutes could easily be tightened by half prior to the conventional airport finale. The ridiculous plot does just about make sense, but there are also times in the third act when it’s like an extended anti-smoking ad. At its best, Welcome is a 7/10, at its worst, a 4/10; Wang’s performance and Song’s typically precise, good-looking package rate it 6/10.
Set in Shanghai, but actually shot down south in Yunnan province and up north in Beijing, it has clean, clear widescreen photography by He Shan 何山 (smash hit Lost in the Stars 消失的她, 2022). Plastic duck effects, both SFX and VFX, are very smoothly integrated. The Chinese and English titles both mean “my side” in a physical sense, referring to her ability to cure his xanthophobia by her sheer physical presence.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Alibaba Pictures Culture (CN), Hainan Momo Pictures (CN), Beijing Storycom International Culture Communication (CN), Hainan Canno Studio Pictures (CN), Joy Wood Pictures (CN). Produced by Beijing Storycom International Culture Communication (CN), Beijing Alibaba Pictures Culture (CN).
Script: Miao Qian, Song Haolin. Photography: He Shan. Editing: Ye Xiang, Feng Shan Yu Lin. Music: Wu Tao, Hu Botao. Art direction: Liu Jing. Costumes: Liang Wenjing. Styling: Kong Lingyuan. Sound: Liu Yanjun, Fu Kang. Action: Xue Feiwei. Visual effects: Huang Canzhou, Jiang Chao (Beijing Kernel Film & TV). Executive direction: Wang Haoran.
Cast: Yu Shi (Chen Xiaozhou), Wang Yinglu (Feng Jia’nan), Jiu Kong (Sun, doctor), Huang Yan (Liu Yiding), Liu Yang (Fan, event planner), La Hong [Meng Yinghong] (Cancan, Feng Jia’nan’s assistant), Zhao Tianyang (Liu Minghao, cameraman), Ma Dazhi (Xiaochao, shy editor), Yi Lijing (CEO), Zheng Jiabin (marketing director), Sun Yiming (department head), Zhai Yujia (Jimmy), Li Haotian (barbecue restaurant owner), Huang Chutong (supermarket cashier), Wang Chuan (mobile-phone man), Fan Chong (singer in bar), Feng Weiqiang (doctor), Yu Xiyue (nurse), Sun Shuaihang (specialist doctor).
Release: China, 5 Jul 2024.