Somewhere Only We Know
有一个地方只有我们知道
China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 108 mins.
Director: Xu Jinglei 徐静蕾.
Rating: 5/10.
Mainstream melodrama in scenic Prague doesn’t have much emotional traction.
STORY
Prague, the present day. After being dumped by her fiance Qi Xin (Huang Lixing), Jin Tian (Wang Likun), soon to turn 30, flies to the Czech capital and signs up for a year’s Czech language course. Her late grandmother, Chen Lanxin (Xu Jinglei), who effectively raised her, had lived in the city after World War II, so Jin Tian already felt a connection with it. As part of her “new beginning”, Jin Tian draws up a list of things to do, which includes a one-night stand. After getting blind drunk at a night club, she picks up Peng Zeyang (Wu Yifan) – a local Chinese cellist who is a friend of one of her classmates, violinist Luo Ji (Zhang Chao) – but then passes out. Peng Zeyang takes her to the comfy home he shares with his mother (Cong Shan) and his young daughter (Cai Shuya), whom he’s raising on his own. The following weekend, Jin Tian goes with Peng Zeyang, Luo Ji and the latter’s girlfiend, Shanshan (Rayza), to a country wedding at which the two men are playing in the band. During an intimate moment, Jin Tian asks Peng Zeyang to translate a letter she’s received that was in her grandmother’s belongings and clearly meant a lot to her: written in 1979 by a Prague doctor, Josef Novák (Gordon Alexander), it asked Chen Lanxin how she was after almost 40 years. Jin Tian realises that when her grandmother was in Prague during the late 1940s, she had a grand love affair with Josef Novák that somehow ended badly. She determines to find out if Josef Novák is still alive; but as she discovers more about Chen Lanxin’s life, it has an effect on her own emotional stability and her burgeoning relationship with Peng Zeyang.
REVIEW
After announcing that the international rom-com Dear Enemy 亲密敌人 (2011) was to be her last purely mainstream movie as a director, Mainland actress Xu Jinglei 徐静蕾 returns with her most commercial confection to date, a melodrama of lost love that yoyos between the present and the past in scenic Prague. Dedicated to her own grandmother, and clearly a film of personal importance, Somewhere Only We Know 有一个地方只有我们知道 is unfortunately the weakest of the 40-year-old film-maker’s six movies as a director. That’s largely thanks to a script that doesn’t develop any emotional traction in either of its two time-lines and is full of the episodic construction, sudden plot-reversals and melodramatic cliches (a “special place” for lovers, a suicide attempt, etc.) that are more typical of TV drama series. Coming from a director who’s consistently challenged herself or reflected social trends – A Letter from an Unknown Woman 一个陌生女人的来信 (2004, from the Stefan Zweig novella), the Kammerspiel Dreams May Come 梦想照进现实 (2006), Go Lala Go! 杜拉拉升职记 (2010, from a local best-seller) – Somewhere is a big disappointment.
Entirely set in Prague, though partly shot in China, the film follows the current fashion in Mainland cinema for decorative foreign locations, finding the same kind of exoticism in the West that western film-makers once found in Asia. Successfully marketed as a Valentine’s Day movie in China, it’s less convincing to European eyes, with the Prague setting never explored beyond a touristy level and most of the English dialogue sounding stiff and unrealistic. (The 1940s flashbacks, entirely in English-as-a-second-language, especially suffer in this respect.) However, the bigger problem is that the screenplay – by seven hands, including Xu, longtime friend and noted bad-boy writer Wang Shuo 王朔, plus other regular collaborators Wang Yun 王芸 and Zhao Meng 赵梦 – never forges a strong enough emotional link between the present-day strand (dumped 30-year-old flies to Prague for an emotional re-boot) and the late 1940s one (her grandmother’s love affair with a local doctor).
After some initial scene-setting of Jin Tian arriving in Prague, enrolling in a language course and (rather obviously) starting her life afresh – she has “let it be” tattooed on her neck, and does daring things like drinking, smoking and trying a one-night stand – the link is triggered by an old letter found among her late grandmother’s belongings that hints at a long-buried affair during her youth. Thereon, inbetween Jin Tian having an on-off relationship with young Chinese resident who’s also a single father, the flashbacks start around the 40-minute mark and continue until the end. It’s a format that’s not so different from Xu’s second directorial outing, Letter.
It’s to the credit of actress Wang Likun 王丽坤 that her character isn’t overwhelmed by Xu herself playing the grandmother in flashbacks. Best known for TV drama, the 30-year-old ballet student-turned-actress has limited big-screen experience (the lead in thriller Filling the Gap 八十一格, 2008, a supporting role in the rom-commy EX-Files 前任攻略, 2014) but holds the screen here when given the chance by the script – which means she’s better in lighter moments than when called on to show emotional distress or any kind of consistent character arc. In the 1940s flashbacks, Xu is serene as the young medical student who falls for the Czech doctor, but hampered by having to act in English. She has a convincing physical chemistry with Scottish stuntman-actor Gordon Alexander but he’s saddled by both an acquired Czech accent and soupy dialogue.
Because of its bitty exposition and confused historical background, the 1940s story doesn’t have the conviction or heft it should have – making the film more a modern story with a few flashbacks rather than one with genuinely parallel narratives that enrich each other. The problem is that the modern story doesn’t convince much, either. Making his film debut in the top-billed spot, Guangzhou-born, Vancouver-raised singer Wu Yifan 吴亦凡 [Kris Wu], 24, is largely just pretty and unresponsive, having minimal chemistry with Wang (except in some lighter moments) and unbelievable as both a cellist and a single father. In contrast, veteran Cong Shan 丛珊 is called upon to over-act wildly in some scenes as his depressive mother. The freshest performances are among the supports – Zhang Chao 张超 as a light-hearted violinist friend and Beijing-born Kazakh actress Rayza 热依扎 (aka Riza Alimzhan Риза Алимжан) as his perky girlfriend – plus Xu regular, Taiwan American singer-actor Huang Lixing 黄立行 [Stanley Huang], who pops up for one dramatically convenient scene an hour in.
Summertime Prague looks consistently pretty in the widescreen images of Taiwan d.p. Li Pingbin 李屏宾 [Mark Lee], but without any difference in the lighting scheme to distinguish the 1940s sequences. Period art direction (by Czech Milan Býček, I Served the King of England, 2006) and costumes are fine, though Xu’s hairstyle looks too modern and small slips like writing her name in pinyin a decade before the system was invented are unnecessary. Music by An Wei 安巍 is okay but has a distracting habit of slipping into well-known chunks of Smetana whenever real emotion is called for – which just about sums up the pop level on which the whole movie operates. Xu can do – and has done – far better than this.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Kaila Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Taobao Network (CN), Gravity Pictures Film Production (CN), Shanghai Chuang Zhan Culture Media (CN), Heyi Pictures (CN), Beijing Yuntu Media (CN).
Script: Wang Shuo, Xu Jinglei, Shi Qing, Wang Yun, Zhao Meng, Liang Qinger, Situ Pengli. Photography: Li Pingbin [Mark Lee]. Editing: Zhang Jia. Music: An Wei. Title song vocal: Wu Yifan [Kris Wu]. Production design: Milan Býček. Art direction: Lou Pan. Costume design: Li Hui, Katarína Hollá. Sound: An Wei. Executive directors: Si Weiwei, Huang Qi.
Cast: Wu Yifan [Kris Wu] (Peng Zeyang), Wang Likun (Jin Tian), Xu Jinglei (young Chen Lanxin), Gordon Alexander (Josef Novák), Cong Shan (Xiuzhi, Peng Zeyang’s mother), Zhang Chao (Luo Ji), Rayza (Shanshan), Cai Shuya (Peng Jia’ni, Peng Zeyang’s daughter), Huang Lixing [Stanley Huang] (Qi Xin), Wang Jun (Peng Zeyang’s father), Wang Liyuan (old Chen Lanxin), Václav Skala (old Josef Novák), Liang Qinger (Song Xier/Kitty).
Release: China, 10 Feb 2015.
(Originally published on Film Business Asia, 31 Mar 2015.)