Crossing a Dawn
今晚正好
China, 2026, colour, 2.35:1, 102 mins.
Director: Zhao Badou 赵八斗.
Rating: 6/10.
Actress Ma Sichun is terrific in this all-through-the-night romantic two-hander, though as a whole the film is sometimes too smart for its own good.
STORY
Beijing, 15 Mar 2026, late afternoon. Xu Qiu (Ma Sichun) meets her best friend Tingting (Lv Xingchen) for a session at an expensive massage parlour, during which they talk about finding suitable men. Xu Qiu picks one off her phone and arranges to meet him at a nearby supermarket. Calling himself AAA-LoneWolf (Liu Chuang), he turns out to look completely different from his photo, and the two get into an argument. The situation is smoothed over by a passing customer, Chen Yuzhou (Chen Haosen), who later meets Xu Qiu by chance again in the street. They end up walking and talking. She takes a liking to him, and he goes along with it. Neither are natives of Beijing: she is 30-something, a freelance interior designer/renovator, originally from Anhui province, and has been based in the city for many years; he arrived relatively recently, is a southerner, and writes for magazines. She says she recently bought a small flat in the city. They wander the back alleys in search of a music bar, The Live House, where they can have a drink together. After that, she arranges a room at a modern hotel but he is forbidden to enter the building as he doesn’t have his ID card on him. He says they can’t go to his place as he lives with his mother. So she arranges to use Tingting’s room while the latter is visiting her boyfriend. However, as they start to make love, Tingting bursts in, distraught after finding her boyfried with another woman. They comfort her and then leave, walking and talking, and visiting an all-night supermarket. In a side street they bump into Guan Xiaodong (Song Yang), once briefly a boyfriend of Xu Qiu. Along with his girlfriend Xiaocaomei, aka Ichigo (Zhang Yifan), he is looking after a large modern house while the owners are away. Xu Qiu and Chen Yuzhou go inside for drinks and a lot of superficial conversation before Guan Xiaodong offers the one of the many rooms for the night. But just as they are about to get into bed, Guan Xiaodong discovers Ichigo has left him without any warning. He is distraught, so Xu Qiu and Chen Yuzhou take to the night streets again. It is now almost 04:00, and Chen Yuzhou reveals that he is leaving Beijing later that morning. He also confesses that he’s not exactly who he claimed to be; she also shows him that she has lied about one aspect of her life. Around 06:00, over steamed buns in her favourite breakfast shop, they come to a reckoning about their brief but loving relationship.
REVIEW
Equal parts involving but frustrating, unconventional but generic, Crossing a Dawn 今晚正好 is a kind of rom-com that’s watchable thanks to a terrific performance by Mainland actress Ma Sichun 马思纯, one of her best in an already notable career (The Left Ear 左耳, 2015; SoulMate 七月与安生, 2016; Somewhere Winter 大约在冬季, 2019; Wild Grass 荞麦疯长, 2020). Following her tour-de-force in Now I Met Her 我的妈耶 (2026), released seven weeks earlier, this all-through-the-night romance between two strangers who walk and talk on the streets of Beijing is another strong entry by Ma in her “return” year, after a four-year absence from the big screen following The Fallen Bridge 断•桥 (2022). Despite sometimes being too smart for its own good, this lightly comic drama is also a notable debut by Guangdong-born writer-director Zhao Badou 赵八斗, 28, who previously worked on the script planning 文学策划 of Her Story 好东西 (2024), a well-observed relationships movie set in Shanghai. Alas, Dawn failed to connect with the audience, taking only a very meh RMB19 million.
From its opening titles, as interior designer Xu Qiu (Ma) walks across rush-hour Beijing to meet her best friend Tingting for an early-evening massage, Crossing a Dawn oozes as much confidence as its main character, with animated graphics that decorate the visuals, on-screen text messages between the two confident women, and a generally slick, commercial presentation. While chatting about men during the massage session, Xu Qiu cockily chooses a date from her phone and – against Tingting’s advice – sets off to a nearby supermarket to meet him. The encounter doesn’t go well; but a passing customer helps her out and he later bumps into her again by a foodstall in the street. It’s the classic meet-cute set-up: she’s forthright, “an open book”, 30-something, but “not desperate”; he’s reserved, quietly knowing, presumbly slightly younger, and easygoing in a slightly spacey way. They both clearly are interested, to varying degrees – and that interest powers the rest of the picture as it shifts from curiosity to attraction to something else.
The main script challenge of all-through-the-night films is to think up situations to keep the two leads together. In Dawn, from around the 20-minute mark on, it’s their mutual desire to find a bedroom to have sex – a desire stymied by one after another lightly comic device. Between times the pair wander the night streets of Beijing – portrayed as an emotionally cold, unbending city – getting to know/discover each other. Some situations feel natural, others (like overhearing a man’s breakup with his partner) very fabricated. And for non-Chinese viewers the pair’s natural reliance on technology, without even thinking about it, will seem creepy.
But what principally drives the film across all its speed-bumps is the chemistry between the two lead players. Ma has shown her ability to portray offbeat, driven characters multiple times in her career and here the 39-year-old actress is on top of her game: Xu Qiu is not a particularly nice character but Ma makes her interesting and involving, hinting at a real sadness behind her assured front. It’s Ma’s (and her character’s) film through and through, but Taiwan actor-singer Chen Haosen 陈昊森, 32, in his second Mainland movie after a rather bland supporting role in light drama The One 独一无二 (2025), is a very good, low-key foil. Though he’s not especially known as a romantic lead (except for the hit Taiwan gay drama Your Name Engraved Herein 刻在你心底的名字, 2020), Chen has an offbeat chemistry with Ma that’s just right, leaving the actress space but not too much. Supporting roles don’t add much, but Song Yang 宋洋 and Zhang Yifan 张艺凡 provide some welcome fresh air half-way as one of Xu Qiao’s past flings and his current, rather wacko girlfriend, both seriously superficial types.
Zhao has come up with some very smart – and occasionally, in Ma’s mouth, touching – dialogue, even though his characters basically remain variations on movie stereotypes. Again, the lightly comic tone comes to the rescue. Technically, the film is very slick, showing no signs of its rapid shooting in three-and-a-half weeks during May-Jun 2025, with well-composed photography of nighttime Beijing by d.p. Fan Chao 范超 (Love Life Light 照明商店, 2023) that doesn’t get in the way of the lead characters, and restless editing by Huang Zeng Hongchen 黄曾鸿辰 (Johnny Keep Walking! 年会不能停！, 2023; Pegasus 3 飞驰人生3, 2026) and Tan Danyi 谈丹怡 that keeps things moving. Music by Chen Xiaoshu 陈筱舒, typically for her, is supportive and easy on the ear.
The Chinese title means “Tonight Is/Was Just Right”. The strange English one refers to a rather involved joke in the film about the computer-aided design (CAD) software that Xu Qiao uses for her work having the same initials as Chen Yuzhou’s proposed novel (Crossing a Dawn), even though its Chinese title 纯爱地 (“with pure love”) means nothing of the sort and seems more to be a pun on the “chun” 纯 in Ma Sichun’s name. (Who knows.) For the record, Ma was also an associate presenter on the film via her company Xinyu (Beijing) Culture 鑫毓（北京）文化, managed by her mother Jiang Wenjuan 蒋文娟, elder sister of actress/director Jiang Wenli 蒋雯丽 (Lan 我们天上见, 2009).
CREDITS
Presented by Momo Pictures (CN), Beijing Damai Entertainment Culture (CN), China Film Group (CN). Produced by Momo Pictures (CN).
Script: Zhao Badou. Photography: Fan Chao. Editing: Huang Zeng Hongchen, Tan Danyi. Music: Chen Xiaoshu. Art direction: Huang Rongshu. Costumes: Chang Yuanyuan. Styling: Quan Meng. Sound: Zhao Ying. Visual effects: Luo Chao, Duan Han, Tang Ning (Film Trees Studio). Executive direction: Liu Dazhi.
Cast: Ma Sichun (Xu Qiu), Chen Haosen (Chen Yuzhou), Zhang Yifan (Xiaocaomei/Ichigo), Song Yang (Guan Xiaodong), Wen Moyan (punk girl), Lv Xingchen (Tingting), Liu Tianqi (Daidai), Liu Chuang (AAA_LoneWolf), Chen Haoming (Dandan), Li Zongmin (Dandan’s boyfriend), Liao Xi (rich husband), Liao Yufeng (punk girl’s boyfriend), Sun Guangliang (lottery-stall owner), Zhang Zhaohong (noodle-stall owner), Zhang Dantong (breakfast-shop boss lady).
Premiere: Beijing Film Festival (Competition), 19 Apr 2026.
Release: China, 22 May 2026.