Campus Confidential

爱情无全顺

Taiwan/Hong Kong, 2013, colour, 2.35:1, 107 mins.

Director: Lai Junyu 赖俊羽.

Rating: 6/10.

Beauty-and-the-nerd college rom-com gets by on the accumulated charm of its leads.

STORY

Taibei, the present day. Twice voted campus beauty and already a part-time model, Dongning University student Liang Xiaoqi (Chen Yihan) has a handsome boyfriend in basketball-playing medical student Zhang Sheng (Jiang Kangzhe) and is doted on by the college’s large population of nerds. Shocked when her roommate Lin Yuqian (An Weiling) falls for a nerd (Lu Guangzhong) and moves out, she posts a diatribe on why she hates nerdy men, enraging all her fans. Her new roommate is petite Chen Meixue (Guo Shuyao), who took up taekwondo to please a boy but was then dumped; she tells Liang Xiaoqi she wants to be as beautiful as her. One night, walking alone by the university’s Chrysanthemum Lake, Liang Xiaoqi watches as the water magically drains away. She accidentally slips into the muddy depression, as too does nerdy IE student Wu Quanshun (Chen Bolin), who spots her. Another nerd photographs them together and posts a story about the Legend of Chrysanthemum Lake, in which couples caught near it whenever it drains end up as lovers for life. Liang Xiaoqi and Wu Quanshun research the legend and find it dates from the original Dongning University, founded in Wuhan, China, in 1898. During the Republican Revolution of 1911, a female guerrilla (Zhang Benyu), on the run from Qing Dynasty troops, jumped into the lake and was saved by a man with whom she lived happily ever after. When the university moved to Taiwan in 1949, it adopted exactly the same layout with a lake. Liang Xiaoqi starts interviewing other people who have fallen in love thanks to the magical lake and finds the stories are true. Furious at already being paired off with Wu Quanshun by fellow students, she tries to hide but keeps on bumping into him; he is equally embarrassed, and his nerdiness is accentuated by a crippling mass of phobias. She gradually becomes more friendly towards Wu Quanshun, but then, against all her principles, finds herself developing a soft spot for him. Discovering that the spell can be broken by tolling the campus bell 12 times, she flies to Wuhan to retrieve the original bell’s hammer. In her search she bumps into Wu Quanshun, who is trying to do the same thing. But after finding the hammer, nothing goes according to plan back in Taibei.

REVIEW

A self-absorbed beauty finds herself falling for a techie nerd in Campus Confidential 爱情无全顺, a likeable but unlikely Taiwan rom-com that re-teams Chen Yihan 陈意涵 (Hear Me 听说, 2009; Ripples of Desire 花漾, 2012) with heartthrob Chen Bolin 陈柏霖. The two have much better chemistry here than in hacker drama Silent Code BBS乡民的正义 (2012), thanks to a busy script that keeps them regularly together and both on their toes, and simpatico direction by Taiwan’s Lai Junyu 赖俊羽. Abandoning the artiness of his previous feature Ayu 遗落的玻璃珠 (2009), a contemporary time-fantasy featuring a teenage girl and a lonely old man, Lai goes for a regular commercial look, with bright photography by Wang Junming 王均铭 (My Elder Brother in Taiwan 酒是故乡浓, 2012; Silent Code) and peppy music by Hong Kong’s Jin Peida 金培达 [Peter Kam] and Taiwan singer-composer Lu Guangzhong 卢广仲, plus mobile editing by Hong Kong veteran Zhang Jiahui 张嘉辉 [Cheung Ka-fai] and Taiwan’s Li Nianxiu 李念修.

Playing a decade younger than they actually are – and looking like it, despite glamorous make-up for Chen Yihan and nerdy-spotty for Chen Bolin – the two Chens (unrelated) do manage to inflect their roles beyond just pure stereotypes. The biggest surprise is Chen Bolin, whose trademark mumbly delivery actually fits the part for once and who brings a physical dimension to his shy, phobic super-nerd that almost makes him a cripple as he walks. Chen Yihan, starting off as a look-at-me campus beauty who’s devastated when her roommate goes off with a geek, handles the change in herself with skill, turning a potentially unlikeable role into one the audience can go along with.

The underlying theme – that looks aren’t everything and even nerds grow up eventually – is cheekily undercut by a Big Twist at the 80-minute mark that almost derails the film. Just when it looks like the story is over, a completely improbable revelation takes things in another direction, invalidating almost everything the viewer has been led to believe and undercutting the Taiwan cute factor. It’s a high-stakes gamble by the writers that’s only just rescued by the accumulated charm of the two Chens, leading to a coda that recaptures the film’s original flavour.

The other main faults of the movie are that it doesn’t quite sustain the energy of its opening reels and is actually too over-stuffed with plot, especially in the first half concentrating on a campus legend that’s thrown the couple together in the first place. With cameos of local personalities coming left, right and centre – notably Pan Huiru 潘慧如 as a fishmonger’s wife, Zhang Shaohuai 张少怀 as an academic and busty model Zheng Jiachun 郑家纯 (aka Fried-Chicken Girl 鸡排妹) as a double-dater – some important supports don’t get the screen time they require.

It’s not so damaging in the case of the wooden Jiang Kangzhe 姜康哲 (the nerd in Cha Cha for Twins 宝米恰恰, 2012, the college hunk here) but is a shame for the petite Guo Shuyao 郭书瑶, 24, who made her mark as the kooky workmate in When a Wolf Falls in Love with a Sheep 南方小羊牧场 (2012) and as the lead in female tug-of-war drama Step Back to Glory 志气 (2013). Guo’s tomboyish, taekwondo roommate makes a funny foil to Chen Yihan’s glamour puss, but the character pretty much disappears in the middle going before suddenly re-emerging near the end.

Though the names Li Jiaying 李佳颖 (Ayu) and Yu Shangmin 于尚民 are credited as the writers – the latter, responsible for the first-draft script, wrote the twisty-turny Make Up 命运化妆师 (2011) and Sweet Alibis 甜蜜杀机 (2014) – the guiding spirit of the movie is clearly that of producer Su Zhaobin 苏照彬, whose swordplay epic Reign of Assassins 剑雨 (2010) is briefly seen when the couple go on a cinema date and whose own anarchic youth comedy, Better Than Sex 爱情灵药 (2001), hovers over the whole sense of humour, especially in its evident sympathy for nerds.

The original title means “Love’s Not All Smooth” [punning on the nerd’s given name, Quanshun 全顺, which means “all smooth”. In Hong Kong the title was changed to 女神爱拣宅, literally “A Goddess Loves to Pick a Nerd”.] In China the film is known as 追爱大布局, roughly meaning “Courtship’s Big Opening Move”.

CREDITS

Presented by VieVision Pictures (TW), Media Asia (HK), CMC Entertainment (TW), Unit 9 Pictures (TW), Hong-Rong Films (TW). Produced by Unit 9 Pictures (TW), Hong-Rong Films (TW).

Script: Li Jiaying. First draft script: Yu Shangmin. Original story: Su Zhaobin. Photography: Wang Junming. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai], Li Nianxiu. Music direction: Jin Peida [Peter Kam]. Rock music: Lu Guangzhong. Art direction: Wu Ruoyun. Costumes: Sun Huimei. Sound: Zheng Xuzhi [Frank Cheng]. Action: Yang Zhilong. Visual effects: Zhang Xianglin, Cui Weiquan, Cheng Jun.

Cast: Chen Bolin (Wu Quanshun/Lucky), Chen Yihan (Liang Xiaoqi/Kiki), Guo Shuyao (Chen Meixue), Jiang Kangzhe (Zhang Sheng), An Weiling (Lin Yuqian, Liang Xiaoqi’s original roommate), Zhang Shaohuai (Zheng Qicheng, biotech centre head), Pan Huiru (Fan Zhen, fishmonger’s wife), Qu Youning (college head), Zhang Benyu (female guerrilla), Wang Jingying (Wu Quanshun’s mother), Nie Yun (Wu Quanshun’s father), Zheng Jiachun (Wu Yifen, double-date girl), Lu Guangzhong (Lin Yuqian’s nerdy boyfriend), Lin Hexuan, Liu Guoshao, Su Yuanjian, Zhu Yiqian, Hung Yajian, Wan Kunlong, Yang Shengjun, Lin Yi, He Guanjun, Mei Xianzhi (nerds), Guo Xuanqi (Dan), Guo Lifu (Grapefruit), Xu Pinxue (Wei), Lan Yi (girl), Huang Wanyu (Tan Dajun, fishmonger), Cai Xiangyi (cleaning woman), Xu Shaofen (nurse), Lv Fuling (Wang Xiaomeng), Chen Jihao (young Wu Quanshun), Cai Yuqi (young Liang Xiaoqi), Zhang Jiayu (high-school Liang Xiaoqi), Xu Qihao (confessional senior student), You Zhixiang (literary man), Wu Xiaoxuan (Xinhui).

Release: Taiwan, 6 Dec 2013; Hong Kong, 10 Apr 2014.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 19 Aug 2014.)