Cafe. Waiting. Love

等  一个人  咖啡

Taiwan/Hong Kong, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 118 mins.

Director: Jiang Jinlin 江金霖.

Rating: 6/10.

Strong new leads and slick technique camouflage a shallow, anecdotal script in this coffee-shop rom-com.

STORY

Taibei, the present day. While moving some books at university, 18-year-old student Li Siying (Song Yunhua) comes across an old notebook with coffee recipes inside. While reading it, she is almost knocked down by a bus but is apparently rescued by a mysterious young man (Zhang Li’ang) whom she instantly falls for. She follows him to the specialist coffee shop mentioned in the notebook – called Cafe•Waiting•Love 等  一个人  咖啡 – where she applies for a job as a waitress. While being interviewed, Zeng Yuantuo (Bruce), a weird student from her college who dresses in a bikini and carries around a cabbage, comes in by chance. He recognises the coffee-maker behind the counter, stern lesbian Abusi (Lai Yayan), as his ex-girlfriend. Li Siying is hired by the coffee-shop’s owner (Zhou Huimin) who spends her time wistfully daydreaming. The mysterious young man who rescued Li Siying is a regular at the coffee shop and appears to have a new female friend there every day, but Li Siying is unfazed. She becomes annoyed by Zeng Yuantuo always hitting on her, but after learning more about him from her tubby roommate Zhu (Gao Baihe) – who idolises him – Li Siying comes to see Zeng Yuantuo in a different light. He introduces her to Chen Zhongbao (Li Luo), the owner of the seafood restaurant where he works part-time; a former actor/director of gangster films, Chen Zhongbao now mediates between rival gangs. Li Siying finally gets to talk to the mysterious young man and discovers he’s a film buff. Meanwhile, Abusi and the coffee-shop owner tell Li Siying the origins of the business: when younger, the owner (Chen Yu’an) had been loved by a fellow student (Hong Yanxiang) but just after they’d opened the coffee shop together he accidentally died. She still grieves for him and gave up drinking coffee. Li Siying tries to re-create the Owner’s Special Blend drink from the notebook she found. And then, just before he leaves on a trip overseas, Zeng Yuantuo confesses his love for her.

REVIEW

Taiwan cute goes into overdrive in Cafe. Waiting. Love 等  一个人  咖啡, the official feature debut of young Taiwan director Jiang Jinlin 江金霖, who started with the short educational documentary My Little Naughties 我爱小魔头 (2007) and was then an executive director on hit student rom-com You Are the Apple of My Eye 那些年，我们一起追的女孩。 (2011). That film marked the feature directing debut of popular online novelist Ke Jingteng 柯景腾 [Giddens Ko 九把刀 ], and Jiang continues his close association with the writer on Cafe, with Ke adapting his own 2004 novel. Like Apple, Cafe has a technical finesse, boosted by several simpatico performances, that camouflages essentially shallow, anecdotal material; unlike Apple, it fails to generate any real emotion at the end, despite all the efforts of its lead actors and a late-on twist.

Chief among the performances is that by newcomer Song Yunhua 宋芸桦, 22 at the time, whose only previous acting experience was as a highschooler in a 2011 musicvideo, Three Fools 三个傻瓜, by Taiwan rock group Mayday 五月天. All the freshness evident in those 30 seconds are on full display in Cafe, where she plays an 18-year-old college student who takes a job in a specialist coffee shop and becomes drawn into the lives of its denizens. Song exudes a natural confidence and, though her role of a mercurial teenager is a standard one, she makes it her own and has good chemistry with fellow newcomer Bruce 布鲁斯, aka Hong Qihan 洪奇翰, as a goofy nerd who dresses in a bikini and carries around a cabbage. Despite all its peripheral fluff – the magic of coffee-making, various bleeding-heart romances – the film pivots on the relationship between Song and Bruce’s characters, which goes from odd couple to something more.

From its opening turd joke onwards, Ke’s script is pretty sophomoric in its humour and, apart from the central relationship, is basically a collection of anecdotes and comic digressions. People tell stories and those stories are shown on screen; there’s the running joke of a former actor/director of gangster movies who now mediates between rival gangs (cue lots of local Hokkien humour and even a pastiche of his cult classic, Put Shit in Your Heart 屎就放心中); and the deepest message the film has for its audience is that “everyone is waiting for someone”. It’s all about as profound as China’s Tiny Times 小时代 movies, and mounted with the same slickness, but has a much more local feel.

Thanks to its surreal elements and the strength of Song and Bruce’s playing, Cafe is a painless sit. But the script is still strewn with half-developed characters (the coffee-shop lesbian, the lovelorn owner, the angelic young regular) and the film fails to generate any sense of magic around the coffee-making process that should be a key element. Ke and Jiang always seem happier to slip into some local comedy, or throw in another guest cameo, rather than really develop any meaningful narrative.

Supporting performances are okay in a professional but rather bloodless way. After basically retiring from acting in the mid-1990s, iconic Hong Kong singer Zhou Huimin 周慧敏 [Vivian Chow], now 48, makes an extended cameo as the coffee-shop’s lovelorn owner, while Taiwan actress-singer Lai Yayan 赖雅妍, as the film’s resident lesbian, doesn’t have anything else to do apart from look stern and butch while serving exotic blends. Widescreen photography by Yang Fengming 杨丰铭 and art direction by Tang Jiahong 唐嘉宏 (Cape No. 7 海角七号, 2008) are both handsome, though the main location has less personality than that in another Taiwan coffee-shop movie, Taipei Exchanges 第36个故事 (2010).

For the record, the name of both the film and the coffee shop actually means “Waiting. Someone. Coffee”. Since Cafe, Jiang has directed the youth drama series Seventeen Blue 会痛的17岁 (2015) for China’s video hosting service Youku, from a script by Mainland novelist Rao Xueman 饶雪漫 (The Left Ear 左耳, 2015).

CREDITS

Presented by Amazing Film Studio (TW), Star Ritz International Entertainment (TW), Fist of Fear (TW), Edko Films (HK). Produced by Amazing Film Studio (TW).

Script: Ke Jingteng [Giddens Ko]. Novel: Ke Jingteng [Giddens Ko]. Photography: Yang Fengming. Editing: Li Dongquan [Wenders Li]. Music: Hou Zhijian. Art direction: Tang Jiahong. Costume design: Lin Xinyi. Sound: Du Duzhi, Wu Shuyao. Action: Yang Zhilong. Visual effects: Zuo Zhizhong (WeFX Studio).

Cast: Song Yunhua (Li Siying), Bruce [Hong Qihan] (Zeng Yuantuo), Lai Yayan (Abusi), Lan Xinmei (Auntie Jindao), Li Luo (Chen Zhongbao), Zhang Li’ang (Yang Zeyu, mysterious young man), Zhou Huimin [Vivian Chow] (coffee-shop owner), Jiu Kong [Lv Kongwei] (Mainland gang boss), Zheng Zhiwei (local gang boss), Huang Yifei (Iron Head Club founding president), Lin Guobin (karate club president), Huang Xitian (Uncle Wang, grilled-sausage seller), Gao Baihe (Zhu, Li Siying’s roommate), Hong Yanxiang (young Yang Zeyu), Chen Yu’an (young coffee-shop owner), Luo Maoquan (young Zeng Yuantuo), Xu Shihao (pen-seller boss), Xu Mingjie (bus driver), Zhang Zhehao (drug dealer in film), Xiao Zhongwen (gang boss in film), Chen Yiheng (drug dealer’s man in film), Xu Yijie (street woman), Cai Changxian, Ma Nianxian, Lin Meixiu, Chen Yanxi [Michelle Chen], Zheng Shaoling (coffee-shop customers).

Release: Taiwan, 15 Aug 2014; Hong Kong, 15 Aug 2014.