Movie Review: 不再让你孤单 (English Title: A Beautiful Life) (2011)

A Beautiful Life is a 2011 movie which seems to be a cooperative project between Hong Kong and mainland China. It was directed by Andrew Lau, who is responsible for the excellent Hong Kong action film, Infernal Affairs, so it was strange to me to see him directing a sappy love story. The Chinese title, 不再让你孤单, roughly means "I Won't Let You Be Lonely Again." I always wonder how they translate these titles so differently into different languages. Movies like this often make me hate Chinese movies, but A Beautiful Life seemed to have two separate and distinct parts to it, and I will have to analyze it as such. 

Fang Zhendong doesn't know who this obnoxiously drunk lady is, but he still carries her home.

The first half of the movie seemed like a standard Chinese romance film, and therefore I did not like it at all. It has some standard (cultural?) elements with I find quite of-putting. First, the main female character, Li Peiru, manipulates and uses men as though they were objects, apparently with no regard for their feelings. She throws temper tantrums when things don't go as she wishes, which I find to be quite annoying. This actually is a cultural thing: it is not unusual to see a grown Chinese woman having a fit. Whereas in the United this would be seen as a sign of great immaturity (which is still my culturally-bound judgement of it), in China it is not soon quite so negatively. Alternatively, maybe there are just many women there who can't control their outbursts, and people in China have learned to put up with it. While Li Peiru is acting like a rich and spoiled brat, the main male character, Fang Zhendong is a standard Chinese guy: he is moral and upright, takes care of his brother, tries to do the right thing, and doesn't really have much driving force. What I mean by that is that his actions rarely push the story forward, and that he is generally quite passive. In the romantic pursuing between Li Peiru and Fang Zhendong, the pursuing is all done by Li Peiru, with her continuously chasing after him. Fang Zhendong puts up with all of Li Peiru's shit without voicing a single word of complaint: her drunkenness (which seems alcoholic), her manipulation, and even her financial instability.¹ This reflects another part of Chinese cultural norms that I am not a big fan of: while the women throw tantrums or act out, the men just shut up and deal with it. This is, of course, not always the case in reality, but this is what is commonly portrayed in films (and I assume other media as well), and in the same way that I was socialized by American movies, there are millions of young Chinese people watching this type of behavior repeatedly in films and on TV. So to wrap up the first half of the review, I did not like the characters of the film, neither of whom seemed particularly lovable. The story of the affection between them also seemed fairly contrived to me: there were just too many chance encounters in which they met, too many coincidences for me to believe it. There is a quiter side-plot of Fang Zhendong's brother and the girl that he likes (they get married and live happily), which I enjoyed much more than the romance between Fang Zhendong and Li Peiru.

I enjoyed the second half a lot more. It made me miss Beijing. In the first half there were a few scenes that gave me a nostalgic feeling (Li Peiru's apartment is near the CCTV tower, while Fang Zhendong lives in the Hutongs near Drum Tower). The second half of the film, however, had a alternatly warm and sad feeling. (spoiler warning) Eventually, Li Peiru realized what a great, honest, loyal guy Fang Zhengdong is, and how he has put up with all of her shit and still wants her, so she goes to him, they get married, and they have a baby. Here is the sad part: Fang Zhengdong has a head injury which causes him to forget more and more things as time goes on. He uses sticky notes all over to remind him how to do things like how to feed the fish and how to mix the baby milk powder. He forgets to pick up Li Peiru from work, and at one point he even forgets to make the rice for dinner, and only realizes it after all the other dishes are ready and on the table. It is painful, and frightening, to watch. However, they live a happy domestic life with Fang Zhengdong's brother and his wife in a calm and cozy little home, tucked away in a maze of hutong-like alleys. That is the part that most made me yearn for a domestic life. Watching the family together in their home made me want to return to China and settle down, cooking Chinese food and living with a little family or with close friends. Maybe after a few more years of bouncing around the globe I will have to go back and find a cozy home in the periphery of Beijing. EDIT: Kind of like this, perhaps.
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1 It seems that Fang Zhengdong gave Li Peiru a long of several hundred thousand RMB, which she then failed to pay back. I am not completely sure on that, though, as there were some details that I didn't understand (I watched it in Mandarin with Chinese subtitles).