We were excited to watch Liu Yifei as Mulan when this corona virus struck at this time of writing. We love her in the movies we have seen her, like The Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and the The Four franchise.
Now she comes here as a young high school student Su Yunjin. Yunjin comes from an average income family when she met Cheng Zheng (played by Kris Wu). Zheng then falls in love with Yunjin as she is not easily swayed with Zheng's money and popular student handsome appeal. This endeared her to Zheng and he tried to pursue her in college.
Fearing the big difference in their social status, he being so rich, she doesn't believe that such a relationship would work. So she was very good in distancing herself from him all the time. Zheng's persistence finally paid off when finally Yunjin to give their relationship a chance and finally they moved in together. After two years of being together, they are tested and each one made some bad choices and eventually lead to their breakup. Zheng then left China to go to America to help with their family business while Yunjin stayed and worked in China.
After a few years of separation and no contact, eventually Yunjin realized that she truly loved Zheng and she is now the one pursuing him. She went to America and found Zheng across the street. Then it was the end.
First of all she looked good in this movie. Everything else I forgive if I find some fault in this movie. Now other things that we liked in this film?
We liked the character of Yunjin, of being steadfast and honorable and full of pride. She doesn't want to be indebted to anyone. She wanted to do everything by her own merits and its like seeing women empowerment of sorts. So if you are into this kind of thing, you can see bits of it on this film particularly on Yunjin's side.
We liked the performances of Li Meng as her best friend Mo Yuhua, and Li Qin as the childhood sweetheart or friend of Cheng Zheng, Meng Xue. We like the women empowerment thing pushed by Yunjin but these two characters are downplayed. We have Yuhua being in love with his childhood crush, always pursuing him and when they did meet in college, she dated him even if she knew that she had a girlfriend. What a lot of b..... Then we have the anti heroine in Meng Xue who despises Yunjin as being Zheng's love, her love being unrequited she still have feelings for Zheng near the end. Both characters are stereotyped as being weak of sorts but both redeemed themselves in the end after a long bout of unrequited love from their male counterparts. Yuhua left his crush in his car when she found out that he was marrying somebody else, and Meng Xue felt pity upon herself when Zheng considered her as a pillow when Zheng and Yunjin had a fight. Both actors were so good that even if their roles can be omitted without damage in the story, they displayed such a commanding presence that we love their side stories altogether.
Sadly we can't say the men in the movie are at par with the ladies. They were relegated to the roles of eye candy and we felt they are necessary to be in film but we do wish they could have added more. Referring to our first like, we love Yifei so much we forgive them. And we need them to get the film going.
As to Yifei's acting, there were a few scenes she was brilliant and spot on but we tend to digress a bit when she's with Kris Wu. We admit they looked good together but somehow there was no chemistry at all. Was it because its called for in the script? We know she tried to stay away from Zheng's character, but I think there should be moments that Yunjin have hidden feelings of sorts. There four instances that we felt she had these with Zheng 1) their first kiss during highschool - her parting gift to Zheng 2) their first night together 3) when she asked Zheng to marry her and 4) when she tried to fetch Zheng at the club when he was drinking. All other scenes with plain and simple and we don't appreciate the roller coaster ride of her emotions for Zheng. Kris Wu's characterization of Zheng might not be at par with Yifei's but his role of being forever in love with Yunjin was felt all through out the film. The roller coaster ride really was the thing that threw us off but still, we love Yifei and we forgive the film for this.
Story telling however was so slow and we think this is the style of Chinese production. There were a lot of scenes that could have been deleted yet the story won't be hampered or affected. Too much character development you can say and it continued on even after reaching half of the movie altogether. Again, referring to our love for Yifei, we forgive them.
For those who will watch this, can you send us an email (submit.katooga@gmail.com) use the title of this movie as the subject, explain to us 1) what was the english translation of what Zheng's character wrote in the temple that made her realize she loves him and 2) what happened in the end. Someone told us the answer was in the beginning however it was just the same. Everything hanged in a balance and did they or they didn't lived happily ever after? Please send us an email.
We watched this film on Youtube and maybe those who watched it in Amazon Prime can have the answers to our questions. The link to the full movie in YouTube is here, simply click on the thumb nail below.
