Hi, Mom
你好，李焕英
China, 2021, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 125 mins.
Director: Jia Ling 贾玲.
Rating: 8/10.
This year’s CNY mega-hit – a comic heartwarmer infused with a nostalgia for simpler times – marked a strong directing debut by theatre/TV comedienne Jia Ling.
STORY
Xiangfan city [modern-day Xiangyang], northwest Hubei province, central China, 2001. Until now, the overweight and under-achieving Jia Xiaoling (Jia Ling) has always disappointed her father, Jia Wentian (Jia Wentian), and mother, Li Huanying (Liu Jia). However, they are delighted when she makes it into the capital’s drama academy. What they don’t realise is that the entrance certificate is fake – thanks to her friend Xu Xiaozhong, who knows the best forger in Xiangfan. Embarrassingly, the truth comes out at a big celebration meal with relatives and friends that includes the snobbish Wang Qin (Wang Lin), who’s always trying to score points over Li Huanying, and Jia Xiaoling’s kindly godmother Bao Yumei (Ding Jiali). When her mother ends up in hospital after a serious traffic accident, Jia Xiaoling visits her, breaks down in tears, and then comes round to find she’s been transported back 20 years to 1981, landing in the grounds of the Victory Chemical Factory. She’s carried to the local hospital by the factory’s young safety officer, Zhang Jiang (He Huan). Jia Xiaoling was not even born in 1981, but she realises Zhang Jiang must be the husband of her future godmother, Bao Yumei. Li Jialing’s mother then arrives, as a 23-year-old woman (Zhang Xiaofei), and thinks she recognises Jia Xiaoling – as her younger female cousin from the big city, Li Leying. Jia Xiaoling quickly agrees with her and the two become friends. Soon Jia Xiaoling meets the younger versions of several people who were at her celebration dinner, including the young Bao Yumei (He He) and the competitive Wang Qin (Han Yunyun). It is a time when TVs are going on sale, and Jia Xiaoling helps Li Huanying buy the last one in a shop so the pushy Wang Qin doesn’t get it. Li Huanying shares it with everyone in the factory’s communal living area. To get her revenge, Wang Qin challenges Li Huanying to a volleyball match. At the celebration meal in 2001, Jia Xiaoling had learned from her godmother Bao Yumei that her mother had lost the match to Wang Qin, so she resolves to change the past. However, when Li Huanying tries to form a women’s volleyball team, all her friends say they’re too busy. So Jia Xiaoling, Li Huanying and Bao Yumei go about solving their various problems and freeing them up, helped by local wannabe gangster Leng Te (Chen He). The team includes factory “poetess” Zhao Yanhua (Bao Wenjig) and a girl with a bald patch, Wang Guixiang (Ge Shanshan). During training, Bao Yumei fractures her thumb, so Jia Xiaoling takes her place in the team. Each team has five girls: Wang Qin leads the Iron Ladies 铁娘子队 and Li Huanying leads Beat the Iron Ladies 打铁娘子队. Wang Qin’s team ends up winning, though only thanks to a mis-call by the amateur referee (Sun Jibin). Impressed by Li Huanying’s pluck, the factory head (Du Yuan) fancies her as his daughter-in-law, so has her introduced to his son, Shen Guanglin (Shen Teng). But Jia Xiaoling already knows that her father was a man called Jia Wentian, not Shen Guanglin, and that the latter ended up as Wang Qin’s husband. So she resolves that the pairing must not be allowed to happen. Things get even more complicated when she herself falls into dating Leng Te.
REVIEW
A young woman travels back 20 years and tries to change the past in Hi, Mom 你好，李焕英, a comic heartwarmer that nuked most other films during this year’s Chinese New Year with a gigantic RMB5.41 billion, making it the Mainland’s second biggest grosser ever (just behind Wolf Warrior II 战狼II, 2017). As well as confirming audiences’ gradual shift away from VFX-athons towards more human-centred, locally-fertilised movies, it also roundly beat its main CNY competitor, Detective Chinatown 3 唐人街探案3, by almost RMB1 billion. All in all, it’s an amazing accomplishment by stand-up comedienne Jia Ling 贾玲, 39, who not only makes her directing debut but also co-wrote and stars. A big-hearted film in every way, and infused, like many Mainland movies not pitched exclusively at millennials, with a palpable nostalgia for simpler times, it’s not only beautifully cast and written but also touched a popular nerve with its un-icky blend of comedy and emotion.
Born in Hubei province, central China, Jia (real name: Jia Yuling 贾俞玲), started her rise a decade ago and is better known for her theatre and TV work, including hosting game shows, than for films. For several years, however, she’s been cameoing in sketch-like movies, generally as a comic chubbie: Surprise 万万没想到 (2015), See You Tomorrow 摆渡人 (2016), The Faces of My Gene 祖宗十九代 (2018), Happiness around the Corner 幸福马上来 (2018, made by her xiangsheng teacher Feng Gong 冯巩), Fat Buddies 胖子行动队 (2018) and My People My Homeland 我和我的家乡 (2020). Part of Mom’s emotional undertow is due to the fact that it’s a deeply personal film, with autobiographical references scattered throughout: the setting is Jia’s hometown Xiangyang (then called Xiangfan), the main character is called Jia Xiaoling, her parents are named directly after her own parents (the film’s Chinese title means “Hello, Li Huanying”, her late mother’s name), and Jia’s father, entertainer Jia Wentian 贾文田, even plays himself in the more modern scenes.
Jia spent over three years writing the script, basing it on a sketch of the same Chinese name she wrote for the game show Comedy General Mobilisation 喜剧总动员 in 2016. Her five co-writers included Sun Jibin 孙集斌 (co-founder of her company Big Bowl Entertainment) and other colleagues, most of whom pop up in small roles as well. And the canny main casting includes not only well-known comedian Shen Teng 沈腾, 41, whose style of comedy (build-up, then under-cut) matches hers, but also Jia’s own protégée, Liaoning-born Zhang Xiaofei 张小斐, 35, in an excellent performance of underplayed determination as the young mother-to-be, Li Huanying. One character (a female volleyball player with a bald patch) is even named after Zhang’s real-life mother. So, it all has the feel of a family affair, and that sense of intimacy comes through in the performances.
Mainland cinema hasn’t been short of time-travel films and associated riffs in recent years: Miss Granny 重返20岁 (2015), Goodbye Mr. Loser 夏洛特烦恼 (2015), Suddenly Seventeen 28岁未成年 (2016), How Long Will I Love U 超时空同居 (2018), Over Again 回到过去拥抱你 (2019), to name just a few. Basically, Mom is little different from Loser, in which a slobby show-off (Shen) was transported back to high-school days as a form of absolution; in Mom, an overweight slacker (Jia) forges a drama-school entrance certificate to please her parents but is then shamed when the truth comes out at a celebration dinner and soon afterwards her mother is hospitalised after a traffic accident. In her grief she’s transported back from 2001 to 1981, and befriends a younger version of her mother at a chemical factory.
With terrific work by art director Zhao Hai 赵海 (period dramas The Chef The Actor The Scoundrel 厨子戏子痞子, 2013, The Golden Era 黄金时代, 2014) and stylist Liu Xiaoli 刘晓莉 (1970s-set drama Youth 芳华, 2017), and warm, beautifully composed photography by Sun Ming 孙明(d.p. on Shen’s two hits, Goodbye Mr. Loser and Hello Mr. Billionaire 西虹市首富, 2018), the film creates an era of state enterprises and communal values that was soon to be decimated by the Mainland’s switch to a market economy. Mom doesn’t make fun of this background but rather embraces it in a nostalgic way; and the characters, as opposed to the period settings, remain the drivers. Unlike some fellow comedians who’ve turned film-makers, Jia and her co-writers manage to make the film more than just a series of comic sketches, with an evolving story of Li Huanying’s quiet grit, the daughter’s increasingly complex attempts to manipulate history, and two twists (at the 95-minute mark, and the two-hour point) that are very satisfying. The real Li Huanying, Jia’s mum, is movingly shown in a photo at the end.
Though it’s five minutes too long at the end, Mom never drags, thanks to all its characters and incident. It could, however, be criticised on a structural level: the main plot is pretty much put on hold for half-an-hour as Shen appears (as the factory owner’s asinine son) halfway through and does his usual stuff. But the section is so entertaining and full of charm that it hardly matters, and Shen, currently China’s coolest character comedian, does get the film’s funniest line – an untranslatable pun on the traditional welcome huānyíng guānglín 欢迎光临.
Also contributing to the film’s emotional underpinning is the score by Peng Fei 彭飞 (Lost in Russia 囧妈, 2020; Love Will Tear Us Apart 我要我们在一起, 2021), which expertly manipulates the changing moods and can turn from comedy to tears in a heartbeat. The film was shot in its actual location between Sep 2019 and Jan 2020.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Jingxi Culture & Tourism (CN), Shanghai Ruyi Film & TV Production (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Beijing Cheering Time Culture & Entertainment (CN), New Classics Media (CN), Beijing Big Bowl Entertainment Culture Media (CN), Alibaba Pictures (Beijing) (CN).
Script: Jia Ling, Sun Jibin, Wang Yu, Liu Honglu, Bu Yu, Guo Yupeng. Photography: Sun Ming, Liu Yin. Editing: Ye Xiang. Music: Peng Fei. Theme song: Akiyama Sayuri (music), Li Cong (lyrics), Zhang Xiaofei (vocal). Art direction: Zhao Hai. Styling: Liu Xiaoli. Sound: Zhao Nan, Yang Jiang. Action: Yao Xingxing. Visual effects: Cai Meng, Liu Ying. Executive direction: Gu Haiping.
Cast: Jia Ling (Jia Xiaoling), Zhang Xiaofei (young Li Huanying), Shen Teng (Shen Guanglin, Wang Qin’s husband), Chen He (Leng Te, gangleader), Liu Jia (middle-aged Li Huanying), Ding Jiali (middle-aged Bao Yumei), Wang Lin (middle-aged Wang Qin), Du Yuan (factory head), Qiao Shan (young Jia Wentian), Jia Wentian (middle-aged Jia Wentian), Feng Gong (Li Fenjin), Pan Binlong (performance manager), Wang Xiaoli, Song Xiaofeng (audience members), Wei Xiang (worker), He He (young Bao Yumei), He Huan (young Zhang Jiang), Han Yunyun (young Wang Qin), Bao Wenjing (Zhao Yanhua, factory “poetess”), Ge Shanshan (Wang Guixiang, volleyball player with bald patch), Shi Ce (Bai Yawen), Huang Xiaomao [Katherine Ackerman] (Mao Qin, Russian girl), Xu Juncong (Xu Zhikai), Bu Yu (Sha Hao), Liu Honglu (Ma Jun), Sun Jibin (volleyball referee), Zhang Taiwei (Ma Han), Guo Yupeng (Wang Chao), Zhu Tianfu (Gangzi), Dong Ruoxi (child Jia Xiaoling), Cao Hejun (MC), Zhao Tingting (sales staff), Ji Qing (Xu Fengzhi) Guo Xiangpeng (factory worker), Li Yifeng (middle-aged Xu Zhikai), Li Zongheng (man in queue), Liu Di (man), Wang Lihan (primary-school teacher), Ma Lan (Wang Guixiang’s mother).
Release: China, 12 Feb 2021.