Tiny Times 1 is based on the first part of the best-seller of the same title by the author Guo Jingming, who also directed the film and its sequel, Tiny Times 2. The film was a massive commercial success – it earned around 80 million US$ – because, like the book it’s based on, it managed to portray the dreams and aspirations of the youth of the major Chinese cities. The film has been defined by some critics as a cross between The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City – minus the sex.
Indeed, there are many references to US TV series; at times it also brings to mind Ugly Betty, and its setting is clearly a reference to Friends. But others have also defined it as a feminist film, because the story revolves around four young modern city women who are independent and strong-willed. Even if, deep down, they are incurably romantic.
Their story begins with a nostalgic image in sepia print, of the first time the four girls met, when they appeared on their high school stage; they went on to become inseparable friends. The story shifts forward to their college days; they attend different colleges but they share a very bohemian apartment (which calls to mind the apartment in Friends) in a fascinating, very modern Shanghai. The characters, interests and backgrounds of the four friends are very different, just like in Sex and the City.
Nan Xiang is a very artistically-minded girl, studying to become a fashion designer and she is unhappily in love with an unfaithful boy. Ruby is an athlete, a loud, extroverted tomboy, who would rather, though, be a Marilyn Monroe-style sex bomb. Lily is a refined young lady who is already rich; she has an innate entrepreneurial spirit and has been in a relationship for years with one of the best-looking guys from high school. Lin Xiao, who is more or less the narrator of the story (which is told from her point of view, just like Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City), is also in a long-term relationship with one of the hot guys from high school. Lin Xiao is a very sweet girl, a little scatter-brained, whose naivety always seems to get her into scrapes. But she always manages to get herself out of them, thanks to the fact that she inspires a protective spirit in the people around her. She would like to be a different person, though, and she wonders if her boyfriend is attracted by this vulnerability of hers, which she cannot stand. Lin Xiao is also the girl who, at the start of the film, has an epiphany and declares, “We are the most insignificant existence in this era.” Despite this, the girls assume almost “heroic” proportions when they find themselves facing problems in love, work and taking on the world.
Their stories entwine with those of many characters who exist in the collective imagination of contemporary China, such as the boss of the fashion magazine that Lin Xiao is interning for; a handsome, but cruel man, he is a manic obsessive and deeply unhappy. There is also a famous writer who acts like a spoilt child. Then there are their colleagues, prepared to do anything to get ahead on the career ladder and the ambitious, possessive mothers who want to decide the future of their offspring. The male characters in the film are mainly weak and immature.
The emotional world portrayed in the film is that of young, Chinese women with their feet firmly planted on the ground, whose philosophy in life is put into words by Lily in a key scene in which she argues with her boyfriend: “Love without materialism is just a pile of sand.” And the film is jam-packed with materialism, with repeated close-ups of fashion brands – Italian, of course! – private and public fashion shows, Christmas celebrated with unbridled consumerism. But like all fairytales, the film has a happy ending, even if the final frame leaves the door open to a more problematic finale, which will segue into the second part of the story, which unravels in the sequel Tiny Times 2.
Maria Barbieri