Miss Forever
一生有你2019
China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 88 mins.
Director: Lu Gengxu 卢庚戌.
Rating: 7/10.
Nostalgic, song-filled student rom-com has likeable performances and some clever twists up its sleeve.
STORY
Beijing, winter 2018. Singer Ou Yang (Bao Jianfeng), who wrote the 2001 hit Miss Forever 一生有你 but has since retired from the stage and hit the bottle, is approached in his song bar by Erin (Zeng Li), a Chinese American investor from Hollywood who is interested in buying the rights to the song to turn it into a film. She asks Ou Yang first to reveal the background behind the song’s composition. Beijing, autumn 1994. Ou Yang (Xie Binbin) is a top student in his final year of studying architecture and engineering at Shuimu University. Easygoing, he’s close to his roommates: opportunistic Meng Yifei (Yan Zidong), studious Wang Xiaochuan (Lv Shaocong) and arty, older-looking Hao Zhiwei (Jin Zhiwen). The university has few female students and they are difficult to meet. One day Ou Yang falls head-over-heels for foreign-languages student (and avid drama enthusiast) Fang Yao (Xu Jiao) and tries every ruse to get to know her. After buying a friend’s guitar in order to look cool, he manages to get Fang Yao’s call-beeper number; but when she recommends him for a part in the drama society’s latest production, he has to disguise the fact he can’t play the instrument. Meanwhile, Meng Yifei starts charming Fang Yao’s roommate Leilei (Huang Tingting), though she plays hard to get. Ou Yang has ambitions to enter the university’s 1994-95 song contest and first manages to persuade former alumnus Gao Xiaosong (Gao Xiaosong) to give up one of his two singing spots at an end-of-year student party so Ou Yang can perform a song he’s written for Fang Yao. The result is a romantic evening between the two, though they never kiss. The following spring Ou Yang persuades his roommates to form a band with him in order to enter the song contest. His friendship with Fang Yao continues, but that summer everything suddenly changes.
REVIEW
Onetime singer-composer Lu Gengxu 卢庚戌 (co-founder of group Shuimu Nianhua 水木年华) follows his directing debut Forever Young 怒放之青春再见 (2014) with another nostalgic portrait of the good old days of Mainland college ballads with Miss Forever 一生有你2019, a semi-autobiographical yarn built around his 2001 hit song. Though the theme and structure has several similarities to the earlier film – moving back and forth between its protagonist’s middle age and youth – it’s a more resonant movie as well as being a celebration of a much-loved past age in Mainland pop culture, starting out as a conventional student romance but developing some clever twists in the second half. Packed full of songs, and driven by a surprisingly likeable performance from Hangzhou-born actor-singer Xie Binbin 谢彬彬 (Fireworks 毕业的我们, 2019) in his first lead role, it made no impression on release, taking a mere RMB42 million.
Lu, 49, had the idea for the film several decades ago, finally announcing it in mid-2016; the script, credited to five writers and six other advisors (including Dong Runnian 董润年, director of one of 2019’s best films, Gone with the Light 被光抓走的人), took a while to come together. The final structure focuses on a fictional singer-songwriter, Ou Yang (a thinly disguised version of Lu), who’s visited in his boozy, cynical middle age by a Hollywood investor who wants the rights to his hit song Miss Forever 一生有你 to turn into a movie with the same title. Before they talk turkey, she asks him to disclose the story behind the song, cueing a long flashback to Ou Yang’s final year at university (1994-95) studying architecture and his efforts to snag an elusive female student, Fang Yao.
Though it’s brightly played by an attractive cast, and with plenty of humour, the film’s first half is nothing new: boys chasing the (then) small number of girls, an era of call beepers rather than mobile phones, Hong Kong’s then-dominance of Mainland pop culture, and Ou Yang himself being smitten one day by a girl in the university’s drama society. Punctuated by flashbacks to the present, as the Hollywood investor prods the middle-aged Ou Yang to reveal more and more, the movie starts to reveal its multiple twists around the 50-minute mark, confirming one obvious twist (though in an unexpected way) and then broadening out into a tale of inspirational but unfulfilled love that was blighted by bad timing. On a further level, it also turns into a lesson on how the truth is not necessarily the most important thing in either one’s memory or the process of artistic creation. The film ends with an upbeat version of the youthful lovers’ story that may not be the truth but…so what.
Without over-rating what is basically a song-driven student rom-com with a heavy dose of nostalgia, Miss Forever does freshen up a popular East Asian genre that often seems incapable of further innovation. With the dialogue nothing special, it’s the performances that carry the day, led by the bright-eyed, lightly comic playing of Xie, 24, as the young Ou Yang and a host of similar supports as the other students, including Yan Zidong 晏紫东 in the best pal role, SNH48 girl-grouper Huang Tingting 黄婷婷 as his hard-ball girlfriend, and various colleagues from Lu’s pop past in cameo roles. As the elusive Fang Yao, top-billed onetime child actress Xu Jiao 徐娇, 22 (CJ7 长江七号, 2008; Starry Starry Night 星空, 2011), is often too inexpressive – as well as not always flatteringly photographed – for such a pivotal role, though she improves in the later going. In the present-day strand, TV actress Zeng Li 曾黎, 43, is classy as the Hollywood investor who sparks the flashbacks.
Widescreen photography by Wu Jing 邬竞 is washed-out, almost b&w in the present-day scenes (set in a song bar) and bright in the mid-1990s university ones. Period detail by art director Li Zhuoyi 李卓艺 and stylist Zhao Hua 赵华 is discreet rather than laboured and editing led by the experieced Zhu Lin 朱琳 (Dying to Survive 我不是药神, 2018) brings the whole thing in at under 90 minutes. The Chinese title of both the film and song means “A Lifetime with You”, in the sense that memories never fade. The setting of Shuimu University is a thinly disguised version of Beijing’s Tsinghua University, where Lu also studied architecture in the same period.
CREDITS
Presented by Mengshiguang (Beijing) Culture Communication (CN), Langxing (Beijing) Film & TV Culture (CN), Chunguang Youqing (Beijing) Culture (CN), Horgos Yisheng You Ni Culture Communication (CN).
Script: Cong Yang, Wang Jiuling, Zhang Ting, Wang Jiawei, Liu Shan. Script supervision: Dong Runnian. Script planning: Zhou Rongyang, Pan Jieting, Wen Ning, Chang Yi, Li Yindong. Photography: Wu Jing. Editing: Zhu Lin, Wei Yong. Music direction: Lu Gengxu, Jin Zhiwen. Art direction: Li Zhuoyi. Styling: Zhao Hua. Sound: Sun Xiaolin. Executive direction: Ji Zheng.
Cast: Xu Jiao (Fang Yao), Xie Binbin (young Ou Yang), Yan Zidong (Meng Yifei), Huang Tingting (Leilei), Lv Shaocong (Wang Xiaochuan), Jin Zhiwen (Hao Zhiwei), Bao Jianfeng (middle-aged Ou Yang), Zeng Li (Erin/Yuan Jing), Pan Binlong (Hu, drama society director), Yi Xiaoxing (university guard), Zhang Qi (rival band’s lead singer), An Zehao (faculty director), Miao Jie (university guard), Chen Xun (Gong Yu), Chen Bin (Chen Xiaobin), Gao Xiaosong (himself), Li Gengxu.
Release: China, 29 Nov 2019.