Between Us
我没谈完的那场恋爱
China, 2021, colour, 16:9/2.35:1, 95 mins.
Director: Zhao Yu 赵宇.
Rating: 6/10.
Yoyo-ing between the present day and the Cultural Revolution, this light drama is well played and mounted without being major in any way.
STORY
Beijing, 2019, summer. Five years after singing on the streets and in underpasses, singer-composer Lin Shanni (Yu Wenwen) is preparing for a national tour. But at the last moment the organisers cancel it, citing poor advance ticket sales. She’s written over 10 songs and spent over RMB200,000 of her own money on recordings and rehearsals. Depressed, she smashes a guitar lent to her by fellow musician and former boyfriend A Bu (Yang Songlin); later, she buys another guitar on credit and accepts an offer from A Bu to sing in a gig he’s giving in Yan’an. Inside the case of the second-hand guitar she discovers an old-style notebook with the draft of an unsent letter inside, from Hua Lin to his onetime lover, Zhang Qiulan, whom he never properly said farewell to. In Yan’an, Lin Shanni sees Zhang Qiulan’s name on a memorial to educated youth “sent down” to the region during 1969-77 as part of the Cultural Revolution. (Hua Lin [Li Bo] had first seen Zhang Qiulan [Liu Qi] when she was singing a revolutionary song in the countryside.) That night Lin Shanni bumps into a crippled drunk, Dong Dong (Song Ningfeng), who pretends to commit suicide to chat her up and get her phone number. The next day, as she’s about to go home, she discovers by chance that he runs a musical-instrument shop. When she accidentally damages some of the stock, and ends up owing him over RMB21,000, she ends up staying on in Yan’an and working for him to pay off the debt. (A friendship had developed between Hua Lin and Zhang Qiulan. When he fell over in the fields, he’d feigned illness to stay in the clinic she ran with her friend Deng Fanghua [Yin Fei]. He had then written her a song.) Lin Shanni gives guitar lessons to local children and also continues to write songs. One evening Dong Dong visits his mother (She Nannan) and takes Lin Shanni along with him. Later he suggests she should make her songs less sad and more upbeat. (Hua Lin had invited Zhang Qiulan to be the singer in a band that he and his friend Yan Dahe [Liu Yi] were starting.) Investigating Zhang Qiulan’s name at a local museum, Lin Shanni is told there’s no record of where she is now. That evening Dong Dong improvises a song for her, as he’s discovered it’s her 30th birthday. (Hua Lin had sung for Zhang Qiulan and declared his love for her. But then news had come that the university entrance exam, the gaokao, had been revived, and anyone who wanted to could study for it. When he had passed and she hadn’t, he had left for Beijing and she had said she would join him hopefully next year.) Lin Shanni sings at Dong Dong’s street cafe one night. Later he suggests they think big and hold street concerts, helped by his old musician friends, whom he rounds up. She’s initially unconvinced but he talks her into it. (From Beijing Hua Lin had written to Zhang Qiulan, saying he’d met another woman and it was time they both moved on. But each was ignorant of the other’s true situation.) Then Lin Shanni shows Dong Dong the notebook to explain her interest in Zhang Qiulan.
REVIEW
A struggling singer-guitarist finds the course of her life slowly changes when she discovers an old notebook in Between Us, a light drama that takes an unusual visual approach to its split-timeline structure. It’s the first solo feature film by director Zhao Yu 赵宇, 39, who during the past decade has done a variety of work on the production side as well as co-directing two episodic features, fluffy high-school rom-com Girls’ Generation 半熟少女 (2016) and the near-future triptych AI 2026 智爱2026 (produced in 2017, released in Feb this year), neither of which made any box-office impact. It’s hard to judge Zhao’s contributions to those films, as neither attributed individual episodes to a specific director among the three on each film, so his work may well have been collaborative. Interesting enough without being in any way major, Between Us performed creditably, given its low-key cast and subject matter, taking RMB50 million this summer.
The script, co-written by Zhao with newcomer Chen Mengyi 陈梦怡 and also Li Xuanyan 李绚彦 (rom-coms Princess Show 公主的诱惑, 2013, Finding Love 一起脱单吧, 2017), is based on a novella, Fire in Flowers 野火如茶蘼, by a certain Zhou Bing 周冰, and was “supervised” by experienced writer Mei Feng 梅峰 (Mr. No Problem 不成问题的问题, 2016). Structured as two parallel storylines, one set in the present, the other during the Cultural Revolution, the film centres on a struggling Beijing musician who finds an old notebook in a guitar case and then, while on a brief gig in Yan’an, discovers the truth behind the love letter in it. In the meantime she becomes involved with a charming young crippled guy who runs an instrument shop in the city. The film bounces back and forth between her life in the present day and the love story set during the 1970s, with all the strands cleverly coming together by the end. It’s always difficult to maintain emotional momentum in films structured like this, but the final moments, which also contain a few unexpected twists, are unexpectedly moving.
All that is even more of a surprise as Zhao further separates the two timelines by shooting present-day scenes in 16:9 and the past in widescreen – a device that, contrary to most films of this kind, visually emphasises the flashback story at the expense of the present-day one. Also, the moody, self-centred main character in the modern story is hardly very likeable as portrayed by Yu Wenwen 于文文 [Kelly Yu], 31, a Mainland-born, Vancouver-raised singer-actress who was much livelier in The Ex-File: The Return of the Exes 前任3 再见前任 (2017), as the campus goddess in Twenty 二十岁 (2018), and as the never-say-die song contestant in Chasing Dream 我的拳王男友 (2019). However, given Yu’s screen history, her toned-down performance is clearly deliberate and reduces any chances of her relationship with the shop-owner (played with an easy, throwaway charm by Song Ningfeng 宋宁峰, 40, the unemotional cop in crime mystery Bloody Daisy 追凶十九年, 2019) becoming formulaically romantic, thereby keeping the focus on the film’s central relationship of half a century ago. That romance is charmingly played by new name Li Bo 李博 and the more experienced Liu Qi 刘琦 (in her biggest role to date), as two “sent-down” educated youths from Beijing; it’s all portrayed in an idealistic style that, like many Mainland films nowadays, evokes a certain nostalgia for simpler times. Supporting roles are characterfully played in both timelines.
Photography by Du Jinsui 杜金穗 (one of Zhao’s co-directors on AI 2026) is impressive in both screen ratios and, as no doubt intended by one of the financing companies, shows off northern Shaanxi province and the city of Yan’an in an attractive way. Multiple songs, mostly sung by Yu, keep things moving along and help to bind together the yoyo structure. The film’s Chinese title roughly means “That Love Affaire I Didn’t Finish Discussing”.
CREDITS
Presented by Shaanxi Tourism Film & TV Culture Group (CN), Zhongshi Huabo (Beijing) International Culture Media (CN).
Script: Zhao Yu, Chen Mengyi, Li Xuanyan. Script supervision: Mei Feng. Novella: Zhou Bing. Photography: Du Jinsui. Editing: Yin Chengyang. Art direction: Hu Yi’nan.
Cast: Yu Wenwen [Kelly Yu] (Lin Shanni), Song Ningfeng (Dong Dong), Liu Qi (Zhang Qiulan), Li Bo (Hua Lin), Liu Yi (Yan Dahe), Yin Fei (Deng Fanghua), Cao Li (older Yan Dahe), She Nannan (Dong Dong’s mother), Xu Yalin (Jia’ni), Yang Songlin (A Bu).
Release: China, 25 Jun 2021.