Love Can’t Be Said
一直一直都很喜欢你
China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 92 mins.
Director: Wu Jiakai 吴家凯.
Associate director: Zhang Zhihong 张智鸿.
Rating: 4/10.
Student romance-that-never-declares-itself is a half-hour short masquerading as a full-length feature.
STORY
A city in southern China, 2016. Tong Zhiliao (Zhou Yiran), a nerdy, bespectacled veterinary student in her fourth year, has been secretly in love with Taiwan student Gu Bin (Wu Nianxuan) the whole time without declaring her feelings to him. Instead, she writes copious letters that she never sends. 109 Days before Graduation. They meet by chance when he saves her from tripping over her bicycle in front of a wax-apple tree. Later, one of her roommates, Fang Lu (Tang Jiawen), who is always urging her to be more forceful, sends one of Tong Zhiliao’s letters to Gu Bin. Tong Zhiliao manages to intercept it by pretending it was misdelivered, and was actually for Gu Bin’s friend, Zhou Hanxiao (Weng Chuhan), who has a studio next door. By visiting him, Tong Zhiliao has broken the ice between them, but she decides to pursue their brief friendship. 99 Days before Graduation. Gu Bin and Zhou Hanxiao come by to ask Tong Zhiliao’s advice on a sick cat they found. Gu Bin asks her out to the cinema with them both, and there she sees Fang Lu’s latest boyfriend, Qin Feifan (Xie Zhixun), kissing another woman (Kong Xinyi). Things turn violent but the incident brings Tong Zhiliao and Gu Bin closer together. 79 Days before Graduation. Tong Zhiliao and Gu Bin visit aged librarian Guo (Wu Yanshu), and Gu Bin offers to help her find out about an address in Taibei that she’s been writing to but getting no reply from. The address is of an old friend that Guo once fancied back in 1987 before he suddenly disappeared. Tong Zhiliao keeps getting close to declaring her feelings to Gu Bin but never does. 49 Days before Graduation. Fang Lu keeps nagging Tong Zhiliao to declare her feelings – and she finally reads out a speech when Gu Bin takes her to his “special place”. He responds by saying he just wants to stay friends and enjoy life before going back to Taibei after graduating. 9 Days before Graduation. Graduation comes and goes, and Gu Bin sets off for the airport. For Tong Zhiliao it’s now or never.
REVIEW
One of several Mainland youth romances this summer that toyed with the friendship-or-love theme (Close to Love 我们的样子像极了爱情; Almost Love 遇见你), Love Can’t Be Said 一直一直都很喜欢你 is the most artificially distended, a half-hour short masquerading as a full-length feature. The first feature of director Wu Jiakai 吴家凯, who made the 47-minute Chopin Nocturne Op. 37, No. 2 in G 少女苏云, an attractive coming-of-age drama set in his native Taiwan, Love is always nicely mounted by d.p. Deng Xu 邓旭 (Ode to the Spring 你是我的春天, 2022), especially in locations around Foshan, Guangdong province, and is pushed along by an all-purpose score and a script that presents the story as a countdown to graduation. However, there’s no hiding the fact that the film has very little actual plot and hardly digs down into its subject; as a result, it has to get by on the charm of the leads – which is as limited as their characters, the shy Mainland swot and the apparently easygoing boy from Taibei. Audiences weren’t impressed, forking out a miserly RMB22 million.
Lead written by pseudonymous first-timer Ye Man 野蔓 (“Wild Vine”), with three other new names credited along with her, the plot boils down to a nerdy bookworm unable to declare her feelings to a fellow student she’s been secretly in love with for four years at university. They finally bump into each other 109 days before graduation, and a friendship slowly grows thereafter – though always hamstrung by her reticence and his apparent desire not to enter into anything serious. (No prizes for guessing the reason for the latter.) Told from the p.o.v. of the girl, via a voiceover narration, the film should (and occasionally promises to) be about the small increments of attraction – as signalled by the film’s Chinese title (literally, “(I’ve) Really Liked You from the Start”). But the lead characters are uninteresting Gen-00ers, with nothing really to say, and the basic structure by which they are thrown together has a manufactured feel, with the characters being moved around at the writers’ convenience rather than in a more natural way.
Previously paired with another Taiwan actor in the fanciful rom-com 0.1% World 好想去你的世界爱你 (2022), Chongqing-born dancer-turned-actress Zhou Yiran 周依然, 26, shows some of the same kooky charm, while 27-year-old Wu Nianxuan 吴念轩 (horror The Tag-Along 2 红衣小女孩2, 2017) has a fairly relaxed style as the boy from Taibei; but together they can’t really hold the screen for an hour-and-a-half, especially with as thin a script as this one. Mainland granny actress Wu Yanshu 吴彦姝 pops up here and there as a friendly old librarian with an unbelievable backstory (cue the classic 1980s Deng Lijun 邓丽君 [Teresa Teng] song I Only Care about You 我只在乎你), and Hong Kong’s Tang Jiawen 汤加文 (the heroine’s BFF in The Crossing 过春天, 2018) briefly throws Zhou into the shade as her man-chasing roommate whose affaire with the hero’s best pal (nicely played by Weng Chuhan 翁楚汉) unfortunately gets short shrift. Not for the first time in a youth romance, the leads’ BFFs are more interesting than the leads themselves.
Credited as associate director is Nanjing-born Zhang Zhihong 张智鸿, 39, whose experience with TVDs and online features (such as costume fantasy Story of Ming City Wall 明城攻略之镇河妖, 2021) must have been useful.
CREDITS
Presented by Jiuzhou Audio Publishing (CN), Beyond Pictures (Foshan) (CN), Beyond Pictures (Shenzhen) (CN). Produced by Beyond Pictures (Foshan) (CN).
Script: Ye Man, Sun Chang, Kang Wei, Dong Sisi. Photography: Deng Xu. Editing: Wen Ting, Lin Fengchen. Music supervision: Jiang Linfeng, Zhao Hengmin. Song vocal: Chen Ziqing. Art direction: Liu Jing, Song Shaobo (Guangzhou); Wen Zhiqing (Taibei). Sound: Liu Yanjun, Jiang Ke, Cheng Xiaolong. Action: Wu Yanjie. Executive direction: Liang Tianyao (Guangzhou); Wen Zhiqing (Taibei).
Cast: Zhou Yiran (Tong Zhiliao), Wu Nianxuan (Gu Bin), Tang Jiawen (Fang Lu), Weng Chuhan (Zhou Hanxiao), Wu Yanshu (Guo, librarian), Zhang Xinyi (Long, teacher), Yuan Hong (Ma, veterinary teacher), Zhan Ni (Cheng Jiajia), Xie Zhixun (Qin Feifan), Liu Yangzi (fat Dazhuang), Meng Lijun (thin Dazhuang), Kong Xinyi (female hoodlum).
Release: China, 22 Jul 2022.