We meet Jia Jia at the airport in Seattle in the United States as she is passing passport control; hesitant in English, she wins over the immigration policeman’s doubts with her winning smile and by citing the title of the film Sleepless in Seattle. She is one of the many visitors to the USA who stay there illegally just long enough to give birth to a child and thereby bestow upon it a nationality and a future that it could never have in China. In Jia Jia’s case, Lao Zhong, the boy’s father, a wealthy, married man, seems to have no intention of leaving his wife.
Once in Seattle, Jia Jia, cheeky and whimsical, has to adapt. Frank, the driver, helps her find lodgings with a Taiwanese woman who has been offering shelter to pregnant women for years. Jia Jia finds herself sharing the apartment with two other pregnant women Zhou/Joe and Moon. Lao Zhong cannot always be contacted by phone. Alone and far from home, Jia Jia’s only company is her unlimited credit card and Frank, who shuttles her around for her fabulous shopping trips and her depressing nights out. At Christmas, Lao Zhong breaks his promise to spend the festivities with her, spending the time with his family instead, so Jia Jia makes the most of Frank’s company, and discovers that it is only by chance that he is a chauffeur. A talented doctor, Frank left the medical profession after having moved to the USA to give his daughter Julie a brighter future; she wouldn’t have been able to attend the best schools in China due to medical problems. Her mother is a career woman who travels around China at the head of a pharmaceutical multinational and has left her upbringing in the hands of the child’s father.
But the day comes that the legendary credit card stops working and Lao Zhong cannot be contacted. Jia Jia feels even more alone, but Frank continues to stand by her in the worst moments. Jia Jia starts to pay more attention to the kind of man Frank is: patient, calm, shy, dedicated to his daughter, caring. When Frank feels obliged to attend his ex-wife’s wedding, it is time for Jia Jia to pay him back for all the tenderness he has lavished upon her for weeks. She buys a new dress for the occasion and turns up unexpectedly at the wedding to lend him her moral support. But during the reception dance, Jia Jia faints. Rushed to hospital, Frank saves her life, and the life of her son, born that very day. When Lao Zhong, just divorced, sends a chauffeur-driven car to pick her up, it is time for Jia Jia to return to China. Now Jia Jia is the lady she has always wanted to be, with a lifestyle that allows her to spend to her heart’s content, but she is no longer the same person. So she decides to leave it all behind, to go and live with her son far from the empty luxury that life has gifted her. She decides to take life by the horns, and she throws herself into an online business venture, egged on by her new friends Joe and Moon. The day that Frank takes his daughter to visit the Empire State Building, Julie remembers Jia Jia and suggests to her father that they send a photograph of themselves to her. Jia Jia is closer than either of them can imagine.
Finding Mr. Right is an out of the ordinary rom-com, in that it is almost completely set in Seattle. A Chinese story exported to a setting alien to the dynamics of the new China. It doesn’t, in itself, add anything new to the comedy or romantic film genres, even if the duration of the movie could lead one to imagine a slightly more articulate narrative than is the norm. It is interesting to note, though, that the story plays with the cultural characteristics of the protagonists; while the story could unfold in exactly the same manner were it to be based in Seattle or Beijing, the same mechanism that allows the characters to change their perception of reality and distance themselves from their country, an environment oriented solely towards success, material riches and unbridled consumerism, does not allow the new generation to come to terms with real life, a life that is worth living and suffering for. Forsaking status, wealth, security in today’s China is an act of sheer folly, because in the dynamics of modern China, the only thing to be counted on is uncertainty and a sense of worthlessness. In Finding Mr. Right, the characters recreate a mini Chinatown in Seattle, where the food they eat, the language they speak, the relationships they have are all familiar, but a “return” to the real China causes enough of a sense of uncertainty and worthlessness to acquire a different tone.
Finding Mr. Right is a stylish return to the big screen for Tang Wei, the actress who shot to fame thanks to her role in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (se, jie 2007). Following her appearances in films such as Crossing Hennessy (yue man xuan ni shi, 2010) by Ivy Ho, Late Autumn (2010) by KIM Tae-Yong shot in Seattle, Wu Xia by Peter Chan and Speed Angels (ji su tianshi, 2011) by Ma Chucheng/Jingle Ma, we see her here in a totally new light, as comfortable playing the spoilt mistress as in the role of the mother taking stock of her life.
Maria Ruggieri