Whenever we see Shu Qi, usually its in the action genre, so we were surprised that we find her here in A Beautiful Life, a romantic drama movie about a cop and a "bad girl".
Shu Qi, playing Li Peiru, starts off getting drunk in the movie and immediately she meets up with our cop Fan Zhendong (played by Liu Ye). On said occassion Zhendong already took a liking to Peiru but she's very much romantically linked to his very much married boss so he takes some distance. Peiru's relationship with her boss then ends when she found out that he was cheating on her.
She had to move to another apartment, jobless and Zhendong helps her from time to time. He even helped her fund her business that ended up badly even before it officially began. Feeling bad, she left Beijing to go back to Hong Kong with her family. While there she realizes she's in love with Zhendong and returns to Beijing to find him.
Meanwhile Zhendong realized that he had a debilitating condition that causes him to be forgetful. This made him lose his job as a police officer and subsequently sold his house in Beijing and move to another house. This is where Peiru lost track of him.
A friend of Zhendong then tells Peiru of his condition and she was able to find him. In their conversation, even without professing their love for each other, Zhendong tried his best to drive away Peiru but still she wanted to stay and they got married.
They had a baby and Zhendong was taken to the hospital for a head injury he sustained while trying to run after a robber. He was in a coma for a long time with Peiru always by his side, that made her sick and herself hospitalized. When she woke up, she finds Zhendong watching her from her side of the bed and he said sorry if he made her worry.
Seldom we watch asian movies with heavy drama as they tend to have slow pace in story telling and they sometimes drag to a point that I shut off the TV or look for another movie to watch. This one is no exception. It had a slow pace however it didn't drag at all. Each scene was important and tied well with other parts of the film. Character development here was a lot and we can relate not only to the lead characters but to the supports as well, like Zhendong's younger brother Zhencong (played by Tian Liang) and his mute wife Xiaowan (played by Feng Danying).
The characters were knitted beautifully together that we cried midway. It was when Xiaowan together with her mom visited the Fang brothers (with Peiru present). Xiaowan's mom informs Zhendong that his brother asked Xiaowan to marry him. Knowing his brother's condtion, he promises the mother that he will take care of both Zhencong and Xiaowan that delighted her. In this scene we had seen lots of love, like a mother's love for Xiaowan, Zhengdong's love for his brother, and the love between Zhencong and Xiaowan. She was mute yes, but in Zhencong's world, she was just normal. This was echoed later in the film by Peiru, she cried during this moment and realizes that after feeling all this love in the room, she felt that she had neither this love with her. It was during this time that both Peiru and Zhendong had feelings for each other but didn't profess it with each other. This made Peiru very sad.
Story is wonderfully written, same with the dialogues. They went well hand in hand creating for a nicely crafted movie. A story of unconditional love with ample twists and turns and have many heavy moments that one will get emotional for sure. We held back the tears but had to let go with the scene we mentioned in the prior section.
We have never seen Shu Qi performed like this before and we can dare say, we felt her scenes from beginning till the end. From being the demanding diva to the down and out girl, in becoming a woman in love, to being a desperate woman who don't want to lose a husband. All we can say is bravo. A beautiful story, a beautifully done script, nice production work, Shu Qi then swung with a bat and hit it getting a home run.
Liu Ye was also great as the other lead however his performance was not at par with Qi's. It was just enough for us to believe that he was an honest cop and tries his best to take care of everyone. He didn't fail us, he still delivered beautifully in the movie.
Lucky for you guys, this wonderfully written, beautifully crafted, great performance from Shu Qi of a movie is being shown on Netflix so its easy for you to watch this.
