A film par excellence about love, which was released on the big screen in conjunction with Valentine’s Day, Beijing Love Story, with its $16 million box-office takings on its opening day, established the record both for a 2D film and for the behind-the-camera debut of an actor. Chen Sicheng had already written, directed and acted in a 2012 thirty-nine episode popular TV series of the same name; the film version has only two of the same actors as the TV series, Chen and his wife Tong Liya, and the stories differ completely. The TV series revolved around the so-called 80s generation of youngsters, while the film version, structured in episodes, is about couples of various ages and their love troubles.
Despite the fact that the subject may seem obvious and the film offers no revolutionary takes on the issue, the screenplay is thought-provoking with intelligent and credible dialogues. All the stories are obviously based in Beijing, but the film is no ode to love to the city; it is more an ample stage upon which the show of life unravels, because the mixed bag of the city – from monuments to futuristic settings to intimate houses with courtyards – offers such different locations that it is ideal for evoking diverse moments in life. The stories are interwoven, but not in the literal sense; it is as if the characters pass the baton to each other, with the final three minutes of the film a moving and suggestive parade of the whole cast.
The first episode, which opens with a perfectly acted love-at-first-sight moment by Chen and Tong Liya, is the most obvious one and is set amongst Beijing’s yuppie set, in an ultra-modern colourful city that never sleeps. The youngest among them still have high hopes for love, they are in love with the very idea of real love that goes beyond any ideas of financial or social interests; but the older ones with more life experience are jaded and make statements like “Love is like a ghost, everybody talks about it but nobody has seen it.” In the following segment, the tale of a wife (played by the sensual Yu Nan) whose husband is betraying her and who therefore attempts to be unfaithful, we learn about let-downs in love and the arrogance of men who think they are invincible, something that they will pay the price for… But it is in the third episode, played by Tony Leung Ka-fai and Carina Lau, whose on-screen spark makes the story exhilarating, that we learn about the art of perseverance and forgiveness. We then go back to first love in a story of teenagers and the first kiss between two school friends; this episode not only portrays delicate, moving images, but also, quite literally, a flight of fancy which sees the two protagonists takes to the skies, the girl with angel’s wings, the boy as Superman! The closing chapter is all about how generosity of spirit and eternal love trump all; admirably acted by Wang Qingxiang and Siqin Gaowa, the story revolves around an elderly couple who manage to bring fun into this potentially sad tale. And it is in this final episode that the film also reveals an ode to love for the cinema, with a conversation in which life is compared to a film: it doesn’t matter if it is good or bad, if it is long or short, because in the end, it inevitably ends, the lights in the theatre go on and the seats are emptied… And another conversation, cut from the film, but which appears in the closing credits, summarises in an intelligent and light-hearted manner the meaning of marriage.
Maria Barbieri