Take Me to The Moon
带我去月球
Taiwan, 2017, colour, 2.35:1, 101 mins.
Director: Xie Junyi 谢骏毅.
Rating: 6/10.
Time-travel rom-com is an agreeable time-passer, and occasionally better than that.
STORY
Tokyo, 2014, three years ago. Visiting Japan for the first time on business, Wang Zhengxiang (Liu Yihao) looks up high-school friend Li Enpei (Song Yunhua), whom he’d idolised in senior high school. She was the vocalist in a six-member band, in which he was a guitarist, called The Moon Gang 月球帮. At the age of 18, and ambitious to prove herself, she’d left for Japan to pursue a career as a singer, but had made only one CD, under the name Emma Lee. Wang Zhengxiang finds she’s now an office cleaner, too embarrassed to go back to Taiwan. They eventually have a drink together; but when she tries to kiss him, he says he has a girlfriend. Taibei, 2017. After 20 years the members of the band – Wang Zhengxiang, second guitarist Sheng (Li Quan), bass guitarist Da Bao (Shi Zhitian), keyboardist Ye Jingfen (Yao Aining) and drummer Li Yiling (Yan Zhenglan) – reunite at Li Enpei’s funeral. At a boozy dinner, Wang Zhengxiang accuses Sheng, who had a brief affaire with Li Enpei, of not helping her later, when she was unhappy in Japan; drunk, Wang Zhengxiang staggers off and buys three bunches of petals from a mysterious old flower-seller on the street (Lv Xuefeng). After falling in the way of a bus, he wakes up to find himself transported back 20 years, to 17 Jun 1997, three days before graduation. Bumping into Li Enpei in central Ximending district, he hugs her in delight that she’s still alive, though she thinks he’s crazy. The other four friends arrive and they spend the day fooling around. Later, Wang Zhengxiang confides in Da Bao that he’s travelled back in time and wants to help Li Enpei by not letting her go to Japan and end up a failure. Da Bao thinks he’s crazed. Later that evening Wang Zhengxiang tries to persuade Li Enpei not to attend an audition being held the next day by well-known Japanese producer/songwriter Komuro Tetsuya; he tells her she’ll only ever make one album, but she just thinks he’d crazed, especially after earlier encouraging her. After he bikes her home, she invites him to a concert by popular singer Zhang Yusheng, for which she has two tickets; only Wang Zhengxiang knows it will be Zhang Yusheng’s last concert before his death from a car accident a few months later. Next day, Wang Zhengxiang tries various ruses, with Da Bao’s help, to make her miss the audition; in the event she just makes it, by the skin of her teeth. But after finding out what Wang Zhengxiang had tried to do, Li Enpei stalks off. Also, Wang Zhengxiang’s three days in the past – granted him by the flower-seller – are running out.
REVIEW
After magically being whisked back 20 years to high-school days, Our Hero tries to prevent his wannabe girlfriend from messing up her future in Take Me to the Moon 带我去月球, the first major film role for Taiwan actor/singer Liu Yihao 刘以豪, then in his early 30s, and yet another student role for his compatriot Song Yunhua 宋芸桦, then in her mid-20s, after Cafe. Waiting. Love 等 一个人 咖啡 (2014) and surprise hit Our Times 我的少女时代 (2015). Made when time-travel/body-swap romances were in vogue (Miss Granny 重返20岁, 2015; Suddenly Seventeen 28岁未成年, 2016), Moon was never theatrically released in the Mainland, despite Song’s name already being known there. In Taiwan it grossed only a so-so NT$15 million; but it was a hit in South Korea six months later under the title 안녕, 나의소녀 (“Hi, My Girl”), clocking up twice the number of admissions.
It was the second feature by Taibei-born director Xie Junyi 谢骏毅, then 39, after his beautifully observed cross-straits rom-com Unpolitical Romance 水饺几两 (2012, aka Apolitical Romance 对面的女孩杀过来), but is a much less substantial movie. A graduate of New York University Tisch School of the Arts Asia programme, Xie takes no script credit and the film has the feel of a conscious attempt to make a mainstream crowdpleaser than anything more personal. That said, Xie can’t be faulted on technique, draws good performances from the whole cast, and, with his design and effects team, creates a convincing portrait of 1997 Taibei. For cameo-spotters there are even a couple of appearances – heavily disguised – by well-known Taiwan opera performer Lv Xuefeng 吕雪凤 (the alcoholic mother in Thanatos, Drunk 醉•生梦死, 2015) as a flower-seller on the street.
There’s only two things wrong with the movie: its paucity of plot (plus absence of any final twist), and the decision to set most of it in 1997. Writer Feng Bodi 冯勃棣, who’d first sketched out the idea seven years earlier, wanted the film to be a tribute to late singer Zhang Yusheng 张雨生, one of the giants of 1990s Taiwan pop whose songs marked a whole generation and who’d died young from a car accident in Nov 1997. (The year was also a seminal one for other reasons, including the Hong Kong Handover.) The problem is that, for a film set in 2017, it’s just too far back for the story elements to work convincingly, as well as the cast hardly showing any ageing in the contemporary scenes. A 10-year gap between present and past would have been more believable.
The plot is basically a one-trick pony stretched to 100 minutes by a sizeable set-up, several songs (with more, strangely, sung by Song than Liu) and multiple digressions. Our Hero tries to save his high-school beloved from making (what he already knows was) a bad career decision by actively trying to sabotage her future when at high school after earlier trying to encourage her. More comedic than romantic – and with so many loose ends that Song has a monologue at the end to sort them all out – the film isn’t especially funny or moving, but thanks to good chemistry between Liu and Song, the latter’s unmannered charm, and good ensemble playing by the whole cast (especially Shi Zhitian 石知田 as Our Hero’s jokey pal), it passes the time agreeably – and occasionally better than that.
The film could easily lose 10-15 minutes, but otherwise editing by Hong Kong’s Li Dongquan 李栋全 [Wenders Li] is as seamless as ever, while widescreen photography by Taiwan d.p. Yao Hongyi 姚宏易 (The Laundryman 青田街一号, 2015) is always resonant but without any overall look. The film is dedicated at the end to Zhang, and the title derives from one of his songs.
CREDITS
Presented by MM2 Entertainment Taiwan (TW), Showtime International Entertainment (TW), Good Films Workshop (TW). Produced by Good Films Workshop (TW).
Script: Feng Bodi. Photography: Yao Hongyi. Editing: Li Dongquan [Wenders Li], Lin Kai/Jie bo. Music: Wang Xiwen. Production design: Wang Zhicheng. Art direction: Lin Peichen. Styling: Shi Xiaorou. Sound: Du Duzhi, Jiang Lianzhen. Action: Yang Zhilong. Visual effects: Yan Zhenqin (DCraft Studio).
Cast: Liu Yihao (Wang Zhengxiang), Song Yunhua (Li Enpei/Emma Lee), Yan Zhenglan (Li Yiling/Xiaoba), Shi Zhitian (Bao Weiqiang/Da Bao), Yao Aining (Ye Jingfen/Xiaofen), Li Quan (Xu Shengkai/Sheng), Lv Xuefeng (mysterious old flower-seller), Yang Bingdu (Chicken Boy), You Daqing (Zhou, school instructor), Yang Liyin (Wang Zhengxiang’s mother), Pu Xueliang (Wang Zhengxiang’s father), Luo Meiling (Chen, teacher), Guo Jingchun (Li Enpei’s mother), Wen Lan (Ruby, Chinese audition judge), Johnny Matsuda (Japanese audition judge), Feng Bodi (Chinese audition judge), Zheng Jinghong (Zhang Yusheng).
Release: Taiwan, 1 Dec 2017.