A Fangirl’s Romance

迷妹罗曼   史

China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 88 mins.

Director: Qin Peng 秦鹏.

Rating: 3/10.

Ridiculous confection, set in 2017 and 1990 Shenzhen, fails to gel, despite a sprinkling of serious talent.

STORY

Beijing, 2017. Gao Ge (Sheng Yilun) is a Gen-90er whose dream is to make his beloved skateboard fly; he believes that in the future everyone will be able to own one. In everyday life, however, he delivers BBQ sticks. One day he’s tricked by his untrustworthy friend Zhou Xiaodou (Yu Xiaotong) and pushy TV a.d. Yu Wei (Guo Shutong) into promoting his skateboard idea on talent show Venture the Pioneer 创先锋, where the prize money is RMB1 million. Cornered, Gao Ge says his idea is nothing at the moment. However, his ingenuous mother, Gao Bei (Yan Ni), happens to be in the audience and reveals that Gao Ge’s father back in Shenzhen in 1990 was well-known Taiwan singer/composer Luo Dayou, who was on a secret trip to the Mainland. Gao Ge is awarded the top prize, the incident goes viral, and Gao Ge decides to take his mother, whom he believes is a fantasist, to Shenzhen, where Luo Dayou is about to hold a concert, to settle the matter once and for all. There he discovers that Zhou Xiaodou and Yu Wei, who organised the stunt to attract more investors to the TV show, are also there, live streaming his visit. They manages to penetrate Luo Dayou’s VIP suite in the concert hall and Yu Wei steals a glass he drank from to get a definitive DNA test. But then Gao Bei goes missing. Gao Ge, Zhou Xiaodou and Yu Wei are taken to meet Gao Bei’s old friend Lulu (Qin Hailu), now a powerful business executive, who’s heard Gao Bei is in Shenzhen. (In 1990 Lulu [Qin Hailu] and Gao Bei (Zhou Dongyu] had left their hometown to make their fortune in Shenzhen, ending up in a textile factory. In the workers’ dormitory they listened to Luo Dayou’s songs and Gao Bei, always a dreamer, became enamoured of him. After the factory went bankrupt, Gao Bei started her own business and Lulu started selling insurance.) Lulu hasn’t seen Gao Bei in years but recommends the trio ask Liu Dehua, aka Andy Lau (Liu Xunzimo), who was the first person she met after getting off the bus. (He had tried to steal her suitcase, and she, being a good runner, had chased and caught him, accidentally winning a marathon being held in the city.) Liu Dehua, who now runs a tropical-fish shop, says he thinks Gao Bei had a boyfriend back then but he never saw his face clearly. (Gao Bei had a stall selling exercise leggings, inspired by the videotape Jane Fonda’s Workout.) The group also remember Gao Bei claimed to have been the first person to eat at the first McDonald’s in China, so they go to that branch, where they find her. The DNA test proves Luo Dayou was not Gao Ge’s father, and then in Gao Bei’s suitcase Yu Wei discovers pills for treating early Alzheimer’s. Gao Bei is furious with Yu Wei for searching her luggage and discovering her “secret”. The trio decide to return to Beijing but Gao Bei insists on staying, as she wants to “see someone”. (Back in 1990 Gao Bei had heard a singer [Wei Chen] in a bar whom she was convinced was Luo Dayou. She had waited for him night after night, and finally got to talk to him.)

REVIEW

Shot in 2017, and originally intended as a Mother’s Day release in May 2018, A Fangirl’s Romance 迷妹罗曼   史 finally turns up with a suspiciously tight running time and a second half that still seems padded out with its soundtrack songs and an increasingly ridiculous story. Aimed squarely at millennials, for whom the main draw would have been the film debut of actor/model Sheng Yilun 盛一伦 (online drama series Go Princess Go 太子妃升职记, 2015), it’s the terminally fluffy story of a Beijing BBQ delivery boy who takes his fantasist mother to Shenzhen to find out if his father really was Taiwan singer Luo Dayou 罗大佑 as she’s always claimed. There’s enough material here for a half-hour short; but the film is dressed up with cute animated inserts and soundtrack songs, some annoying TV characters who accompany the leads, and copious flashbacks to 1990 Shenzhen when the romance was meant to have happened. Thanks largely to a script that doesn’t really know what it is, the whole confection resolutely refuses to gel; when finally released in spring this year, it crashed with a nothing RMB2.4 million.

The whole enterprise had some serious talent behind it, including veteran director Li Shaohong 李少红 as creative producer 监制 via her own company Rosat and experienced actress Yan Ni 闫妮, top-billed as the mother. On the writing side, script planning is credited to Dong Runnian 董润年, who was to go on to make the impressive Gone with the Light 被光抓走的人, 2019), and the actual screenplay had at least one writer, Harbin-born Wang Peichen 王佩晨, with some experience (her okay horrors The Frightening Night 夜惊魂, 2011, and Black Mirror 少女灵异日记, 2013, plus several TVDs). Making his theatrical debut was Xi’an-born director Qin Peng 秦鹏, then in his late 30s, who after university studied at Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama, graduating in 2008. After that he’d worked as a writer on films and TVDs, and directed the online family drama The Next Stop Is Home 下一站是家 (shot in 2011), that was written by Wang and starred Yan.

Then the same age as his character, Sheng, 27, makes a rather charmless film debut, and is overshadowed in his own age group by actor Yu Xiaotong 于小彤, then 23, and especially by 25-year-old actress Guo Shutong 郭姝彤 (Yesterday Once More 谁的青春不迷茫, 2016), playing two pushy TV types who tag along for the publicity. However, despite all the talk of Sheng’s character wanting to prove his parentage, the film’s emotional centre is the mother, played in 2017 scenes by Yan with a kind of spacy conviction of her own and in the 1990 flashbacks by Zhou Dongyu 周冬雨, then really coming into her own after films like SoulMate 与安生 (2016) and the TVD Sparrow 麻雀 (2016). Though a little hard to take as a younger version of Yan, Zhou is effective as the young dreamer from the provinces who’s attracted by the promise of Shenzhen (then seen as a city of the future) and becomes attracted by a Luo Dayou lookalike.

As in many Mainland films, there’s a palpable nostalgia for simpler times; but as the film becomes progressively more waterlogged and pointless, not even Zhou’s ingenuous charm or Yan’s studied eccentricity can rescue it. As a friend from the old days, experienced actress Qin Hailu 秦海璐 plays her character in both time frames (fairly convincingly). The real Luo Dayou appears briefly in documentary footage.

Technically the production is well-honed, and was shot with two units, both led by experienced DPs Sha Jincheng 沙金成 and producer Li’s husband Zeng Nianping 曾念平 (who also doubles as “artistic advisor”). The film’s Chinese title, which means the same as the English one, also contains a pun on Luo Dayou’s name, and has a space before the final character. It could, therefore, also be roughly translated as “The Story of a Fangirl’s Luo Man”.

CREDITS

Presented by Rosat (Shanghai) Media & Entertainment (CN), Shanghai Bona Culture & Media (CN).

Script: Bao Danlu, Wang Peichen, Yang Yunlin. Script planning: Dong Runnian. Photography: Sha Jincheng (unit A), Zeng Nianping (unit B). Editing: Deng Wentao, Ye Wanting. Music: Huoxing Diantai [Radio Mars]. Art direction: An Bin. Costumes: Zhang Chuhan. Styling: Mix Wei. Sound: Tu Hao, Xiao Baohua, Lin Xuelin. Action: Shi Zhendong. Visual effects: Zhuang Yan (Visual Impact). Artistic advice: Zeng Nianping. Executive direction: Chang Xiaoyang.

Cast: Yan Ni (Gao Bei), Sheng Yilun (Gao Ge), Yu Xiaotong (Zhou Xiaodou/Doudou), Guo Shutong (Yu Wei), Zhou Dongyu (young Gao Bei), Wei Chen (young Ye Weijun), Qin Hailu (Lulu), Huang Jue (Ye Weijun), Liu Xunzimo (Liu Dehua/Andy Lau), Ke Da (Zhang Xueyou/Jacky Cheung), Jiang Tong (Xu Dongfa), Peng Bo (TV presenter), Sheng Dongjun (Ma, businessman), Han Kun (himself), Yu Sulan (female judge), Wang Xiaobin, Hu Zi (judges), Shu Yue (TV director).

Release: China, 28 May 2021.