Us and Them

后来的我们

China, 2018, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 118 mins.

Director: Liu Ruoying 刘若英 [René Liu].

Rating: 8/10.

Long-limbed story, spread across 11 years, is an engaging reflection on love, friendship and everything inbetween, with two strong leads.

STORY

Beijing, Chinese New Year’s Eve, 2007. On a crowded train leaving the capital, Fang Xiaoxiao (Zhou Dongyu) can’t find her ticket when the suspicious inspector (Li Yang) comes along. Suddenly a young man, Lin Jianqing (Jing Boran), finds it. (Eleven years later, sometime before Chinese New Year 2018, Fang Xiaoxiao and Lin Jianqing met by chance on a plane.) Fang Xiaoxiao gets talking to Lin Jianqing and his two friends (Qu Zheming, Liu Qiheng), and it turns out they are going to the same home town, Yaojiang, for the holiday. Fang Xiaoxiao, who is 22, says she’s been away from Yaojiang for a while. When the train stops due to heavy snow on the line, the four walk the rest of the way. (The plane flight is cancelled due to bad weather and the passengers are put up in a hotel. Fang Xiaoxiao goes to Jing Boran’s room, as he was in Business Class and is guaranteed a room.) Fang Xiaoxiao has come to keep her father company, as her mother won’t visit him. She has New Year dinner with Lin Jianqing’s family and gets on well with his father (Tian Zhuangzhuang), who runs a small restaurant. Afterwards she and Lin Jianqing walk together. She’s been in Beijing for four years, doing a variety of smalltime jobs; he’s been at university there for the same amount of time. Both enthuse about the city, and joke about how they have one more year – according to popular legend – to make it there. Back in Beijing the four friends unite for a dinner, and Fang Xiaoxiao brings along Sun Yilong (Li Dong), a boring law student, whom she introduces as her boyfriend. Lin Jianqing says nothing. Later she gets him and his two friends jobs at the megastore where she’s working. After breaking up with Sun Yilong she moves into Lin Jianqing’s tiny room in a subdivided flat. She asks him for advice on her latest boyfriend, whom she then finds out is married with a child. On 31 Dec 2007 they get very drunk in the tiny room and finally go to bed together. The next day she vanishes and, when Lin Jianqing finally tracks her down, she asks if they can just be friends. (Very drunk in Lin Jianqing’s hotel room, they joke about the night they first had sex together, his first time.) One day Fang Xiaoxiao returns to Lin Jianqing’s room to tell him she’s in love with a new boyfriend – but she’s told Lin Jianqing is in prison. On Chinese New Year 2008 she has dinner with his family in Yaojiang and pretends he’s too busy with his videogame design work to come. His father says nothing. On the day of Lin Jianqing’s release from Haidian prison, Fang Xiaoxao is there to greet him. (While the two party in the hotel room, his young daughter and wife call him. Fang Xiaoxiao silently leaves and waves to him from outside in the snow.) Both are still determined to make it in Beijing: he works in a customer service call centre and is designing a videogame in his spare time, while she is working in an estate agent’s. They are still living in the tiny flat but as a couple. (Outside the hotel, in the snow, they carry on drinking, wistfully. Fang Xiaoxiao says she is okay but still can’t find the right man.) Prior to Chinese New Year 2009 they both drive to Yaojiang to see his family and friends. At dinner there’s much talk of how well each is doing, and Lin Jianqing’s friends realise he’s not making much money. A year later, on Chinese New Year’s Eve 2010, Lin Jianqing and Fang Xiaoxiao are forced to move out of the tiny room and spend Chinese New Year in a dingy flat. In Yaojiang, his father also spends a quiet New Year. Fang Xiaoxiao breaks up with Lin Jianqing and leaves. (In the snow, the two drunkenly talk about that time – and then suddenly make a dash for his room. But by the hotel entrance they are surprised by a couple who know him. They rent a car to drive back to Beijing but en route the road is blocked. In the car they emotionally confess their deep love for each other.) Li Jianqing finally uploads his videogame and is offered a lucrative job at a large company. Fang Xiaoxiao sees him on TV one day and exchanges texts with him. On Chinese New Year’s Eve 2011 both visit his father in Yaojiang, where Lin Jianqing invites his father to come and live – along with Fang Xiaoxiao – in a large flat he’s bought in Beijing. Later, Fang Xiaoxiao argues with him, saying money can’t solve everything. (Arriving back in Beijing, Lin Jianqing drops Fang Xiaoxiao off at her modest flat. They say goodbye like friends. Kind of.)

REVIEW

A long-limbed story, spread across 11 years, of two people who are sometimes friends, sometimes lovers and sometimes more than both, Us and Them 后来的我们 is the sole feature to date written and directed by one of Chinese cinema’s most eclectic spirits, Taiwan-born Liu Ruoying 刘若英 [René Liu]. Released in Apr 2018, when she was 48, it was the 12th biggest grosser that year in the Mainland with RMB1.36 billion, a very nice amount for a basically modest love story, centred on two average Gen-80ers and with no huge established stars or flashy action. (The year’s top earners were Operation Red Sea 红海行动 with RMB3.65 billion, Detective Chinatown 2 唐人街探案2 with RMB3.40 billion and Dying to Survive 我不是药神 with RMB3.10 billion.) More’s the pity that Liu has directed nothing since: in fact, apart from bits and pieces, she hasn’t been seen in any features since 2011 (the year she married), and a long-mooted directing project, Lieutenant Yi 易副官, co-written with her mentor, actress/film-maker Zhang Aijia 张艾嘉 [Sylvia Chang], still seems to remain just a project.

Liu has always been unpredictable. After studying music in the US, in the early 1990s she took up a singing career, followed a couple of years later by acting (The Peony Pavilion 我的美丽与哀愁, 1995; dir. Chen Guofu 陈国富; Siao Yu 少女小渔, 1995, dir. Zhang Aijia); though her acting career now effectively seems to be over, she’s remained loyal to singing, with her most recent album released in 2021. Less known is her writing career, which has included newspaper columns and over 10 books of essays and photo-studies, including one co-authored tome, published in 2018, centred on the making of Us and Them that’s sub-titled “film notes” 电影笔记 (see cover, left). Prior to directing Us and Them she also co-wrote, directed and starred in the 29-minute short C’est quoi l’amour? 爱情限量版 (2012; literally “Love Limited Edition”), made during a solo spell in Paris (see below).

Liu’s writings and songs have tended towards reflections on love and other feelings, and Us and Them is in the same genre, using a long-limbed format that’s become common in Mainland cinema. In 2007, on Chinese New Year’s Eve, two young people meet by chance on a train from Beijing to what they discover is their mutual hometown, and a relationship evolves from then. Throughout, the film flashes forward to when they meet again by chance in 2018; between the two extremes, we follow the ups and downs of their relationship around various Chinese New Years. Reversing the usual structure of such movies, Us and Them starts in the past and flashes forward to the present, and the former scenes are in colour while the latter are in b&w. The radical idea kind of works (the past is warmer, the present is bleak), and in the final minutes the film slides back and forth rapidly; but at the end of the day it’s more a stylistic distraction than a real contribution.

Wisely for her debut feature, Liu surrounded herself with proven talent: Taiwan ace d.p. Li Pingbin 李屏宾 [Mark Lee], making the most of the sub-zero, snowy landscapes around Haila’er, northeast China, but always in a realistic way; Mainland steadicam operator Deng Lu 邓璐 (Love Education 相爱相亲, 2017; An Elephant Sitting Still 大象席地而坐, 2018); longtime Hong Kong stylist Wu Lilu 吴里璐 [Dora Ng]; experienced Mainland editor Kong Jinlei 孔劲蕾 and veteran Taiwan editor Liao Qingsong 廖庆松; Taiwan composer Chen Jianqi 陈建骐 (More Than Blue 比悲伤更悲伤的故事, 2018; One Week Friends 一周的朋友, 2022); Mainland art director Zhai Tao 翟韬 (A Fool 一个勺子, 2014; The Eleventh Chapter 第十一回, 2019); and as creative producer 监制 the highly experienced film-maker (especially with such fare) Zhang Yibai 张一白, who’d previously worked with several of the crew. Technically the film is never less than professional, without ever being slick.

Though the screenplay is based on an eight-page essay (过年，回家, literally “New Year, Return Home”) by Liu herself, in her collection Incomplete Me 我的不完美 (2011), she’s recruited some solid writers to concoct a feature out of it – including Yuan Yuan 袁媛 (Go Away Mr. Tumor! 滚蛋吧！肿瘤君, 2015), Pan Yu 潘彧 (Nezha 少女哪吒, 2014; Love O2O 微微一笑很倾城, 2016, movie version) and Taiwan’s He Xinming 何昕明 (Love O2O, TVD version). The result is a pair of smooth-flowing narratives, past and present, which have a clear sense of direction and unforced emotional texture, with a subtext about Gen-80ers trying to make it in life, and their emotonal problems en route. Not just a love story, it’s also about the evolution of New China in the decade that saw Gen-80ers start to take charge. There’s nothing in the film that hadn’t been done before – especially in the scores of high-school-to-adulthood movies that litter Mainland cinema – but it’s presented in a fresh and involving way – and only works thanks to the chemistry between the two leads.

At the time, both Jing Boran 井柏然 and Zhou Dongyu 周冬雨 were rising names who had a couple of successes behind them but still needed the right roles and a simpatico cast, not being bankable names on their own. Boybander Jing, then 28, had been in fantasy hits Monster Hunt 捉妖记 (2015) and Time Raiders 盗墓笔记 (2016) but had only achieved any real chemistry with his co-star in the college rom-com Love O2O, with Yang Ying 杨颖 [Angelababy]. The elfin Zhou, then 25, had built a cute on-screen persona via films like Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂树之恋 (2010) and My Old Classmate 同桌的妳 (2014) but was now really starting to break through with more substantial roles in SoulMate 七月与安生 (2016) and This Is Not What I Expected 喜欢你 (2017), both of which (and especially the first) went beyond her usual sad/kooky playing. Their casting in Us and Them works a treat. Zhou basically plays a tomboyish flirt and Jing her quieter mark, two independent spirits whose paths keep crossing and sometimes align, sexually and emotionally; but though he is superficially the more successful of the two – job, wife, house – he can’t handle it.

The supporting cast is just that, though veteran director Tian Zhuangzhuang 田壮壮 is notable in an understated performance as the boy’s restaurateur father who knows more than he ever says. Throughout, the gentle chamber score is always well spotted. Shooting took place from Oct to Dec 2017, in often Arctic temperatures. The Chinese title literally means “We, Later On”.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Such A Good Film (CN), Horgos IN’R Films (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Beijing Huahuaduoduo Culture (CN). Produced by Shanghai Such A Good Film (CN).

Script: Yuan Yuan, He Xinming, Pan Yu, An Wei, Liu Ruoying [René Liu]. Original story: Liu Ruoying [René Liu]. Photography: Li Pingbin [Mark Lee]. Editing: Kong Jinlei, Liao Qingsong. Music: Chen Jianqi. Art direction: Zhai Tao. Styling: Wi Lilu [Dora Ng]. Sound: Tang Xiangju, Du Duzhi, Wu Shuyao.

Cast: Jing Boran (Lin Jianqing), Zhou Dongyu (Fang Xiaoxiao), Tian Zhuangzhuang (Lin Jianqing’s father), Qu Zheming (Chen Dewen Lin Jianqing’s college friend), Liu Qiheng (Zheng Huan, Lin Jianqing’s college friend), Su Xiaoming (Mao), Zou Yitian (Ming), Zhang Zixian (male neighbour in subdivided flats), Shi Yufei (long-haired young woman), Li Dong (Sun Yilong, Fang Xiaoxiao’s boyfriend), Li Jianqing (guitarist in underpass), Li Yang (ticket collector on train), Shen Qiao (sexy female neighbour in subdivided flats).

Release: China, 28 Apr 2018.