Go Brother

快把我哥带走

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 115 mins.

Director: Zheng Fenfen 郑芬芬.

Rating: 5/10.

Lightweight youth movie, centred on a feuding sister and brother, starts engagingly but then loses traction.

STORY

Ludao city, southern China, autumn 2014. Shifen (Peng Yuchang), 18, is always teasing and playing tricks on his 16-year-old sister Shimiao (Zhang Zifeng) and, with their parents (Xu Guangyu, Jiang Hongbo) always “away on business” – code for a disintegrating marriage – the two teenagers have come to rely on each other emotionally. Shimiao’s best friend, the self-absorbed Miao Miaomiao (Zhao Jinmai), is not much use when it comes to giving advice. Shimiao discovers that Shifen is only one piece away from winning a jigsaw competition for which the prize is a family holiday together, so she makes a truce with him. However, on her 17th birthday on 28 Sep – which no one has remembered – she sees Shifen celebrating with their mother and the latter’s new male friend, Hu (Xia Qi), in a restaurant. Unhappy, Shimiao nostalgically visits the galleon restaurant, now closed, where her parents always used to take her on her birthday in happier times. Shifen arrives and the two of them argue, after which Shimiao makes a wish that her brother never existed. She wakes up at school the next day to find that she has no brother; instead, Miao Miaomiao has an elder brother, Miao Shifen, who looks just like Shifen. Shimiao’s parents invite her to the galleon restaurant for a birthday dinner – a day late – and everyone is happy together. But Shimiao feels lonely when she sees Miao Miaomiao and Miao Shifen fooling around together in exactly the same way as she did with Shifen. Meanwhile, Miao Shifen thinks that the reason Shimiao seems to know him so well is because she fancies him.

REVIEW

After several years in TV drama, Taiwan writer-director Zheng Fenfen 郑芬芬 makes a ho-hum return to feature films with her youth movie Go Brother 快把我哥带走, a typically good-looking but lightweight production that’s intermittently engaging (thanks to its two leads) but is never compelling in its development and is way too stretched at almost two hours. Set in a fictional Mainland city, the story of two comically feuding teenage siblings has a slight fairytale tone that becomes explicit with its main gimmick: after making a birthday wish that she never had an elder brother, the young heroine wakes up to find that he’s become the brother of her BFF – a family spin on the fantasy/time travel stories that have proved popular in recent times. Shot through with references to US pop culture and high-school films, it’s been a solid success on Mainland release, hawling in some RMB350 million.

Still best known for the deaf-youth romance Hear Me 听说, which was Taiwan’s biggest local hit of 2009, Zheng, 48, has yet to equal that movie in its combination of lightness and lack of sentimentality. Former child actress Zhang Zifeng 张子枫, now 17, shows the same kind of sparkiness as in the high-school comedy How Are You 李梅和韩梅梅  昨日重现(2017) and is well partnered by Peng Yuchang 彭昱畅 – 23 but looking 18 – in a turnaround from his geeky student in Our Shining Days 闪光少女 (2017). The problem is that, after a lively first half-hour, the screenplay – adapted from the continuing manga (2015-  ) of the same name by twin sisters Liu Lufei 柳露霏 and Liu Shuangfei 柳霜霏, 28, known under the pen name You•Ling 幽•灵 (“Ghost” or “Spectre”) – substitutes cuteness for any involving development of its main theme: that the sister needs to get over her obsession with her big brother and move on emotionally. The screen story by Lv Xu 吕旭 (The Mountain 那座山, 2014) convincingly draws a world in which adults are superfluous and teenagers can generally decide things for themselves, but is bumpily constructed and doesn’t come up with enough interesting spins beyond the main gimmick.

Aside from the leads, casting is solid, with 15-year-old Zhao Jinmai 赵今麦 okay as the heroine’s self-absorbed, pop-mad BFF and, among the adults, Jiang Hongbo 姜宏波, 45, is fine as the heroine’s mother. For the teenie audience there’s also Yi An Music Club 易安音乐社 boybander Fang Xiangrui 方翔锐 as the brother’s schoolpal. Art direction and styling have a slight fairytale feel that’s attractive, and Zheng comes up with occasional magical sequences (such a birthday dinner on a galleon restaurant) without giving the film a single, sustained tone. (A cartoonish fight, framed like a page from a manga, just hangs there in isolation.)

The film is actually Zheng’s second Mainland movie, after her little-seen war drama Wan Ding Qiao 畹町桥 (2012), and – apart from the presence of scooters – doesn’t have a noticeable Taiwan flavour. Locations were in Xiamen, Fujian province. The Chinese title means “Quick, Take My Big Brother Away”.

CREDITS

Presented by Wanda Media (CN). Produced by Wanda Media (CN).

Script: Zhao Yue, Zheng Fenfen. Story: Lv Xu. Manga: You Ling. Script advice: You Ling. Photography: Zhang Ying. Editing: Gu Xiaoyun. Music: Wang Xiwen. Art direction: Wang Shuo. Styling: Xu Liwen. Sound: Hao Gang. Visual effects: Wan Xiaojuan.

Cast: Zhang Zifeng (Shimiao), Peng Yuchang (Shifen/Miao Shifen), Zhao Jinmai (Miao Miaomiao), Sun Zeyuan (Zhen Kaixin), Fang Xiangrui (Wan Sui), Liu Guanyi (Wan Xing, Wan Sui’s younger half-brother), Xu Guangyu (Shimiao’s father), Jiang Hongbo (Li Lan, Shimiao’s mother), Liu Zihe (Miao Miaomiao’s mother), Jiang Linjing (Miao Miaomiao’s father), Xia Qi (Hu), Feng Dalu (tramp), Zhang Bo (teacher), Cao Yunqing (Wan).

Release: China, 17 Aug 2018.