MikeA
When her artist boyfriend Sam (Ekin Cheng) dies, Maan (Karena Lam) is left lost, alone, and with thoughts of self-harm. She pines over his memory, and becomes obsessed with his recollections of a landscape he remembers vividly from his childhood.Maan travels to Qingdao, where Sam grew up, to try and find this mysterious location. She stays with a cousin of Sam's, but wallows in her misery, copying a page of Sam's diary every day while she vainly tries to find someone who can help her. Unfortunately, none of the locals recognise the landscape she describes.Eventually, and after several hesitant encounters, she finds help in the form of Lit (Ye Liu), a laconic postman with whom she slowly bonds. But can she find happiness again with Sam constantly on her mind? This beautiful film struck many chords with me when I first watched it a few years ago, and re-watching it was a real pleasure. Qingdao is a lovely location, the gentle storyline unfolds pleasingly, and the ending is magically breathtaking. It's easily one of my favourite films of the last few years.
Harry T. Yung
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** SpoilersQingdao is a quaintly beautiful Chinese city at the edge of the ocean, with prominent European influence in its residential architecture. Maan comes here after her boyfriend Sam died of a terminal illness, to look for a landscape that had been haunting his mind before his death. Maan stays with a friendly women Tung, a cousin of Sam's, helping out in the latter's primitive barber shop while following her own quest, using a picture of the landscape painted by Sam. In this simple neighbourhood, Maan makes the acquaintance of Lit, a young postman who is well liked by the children around. The two of them gradually grow fond of each other while Lit helps Maan in her search.Maan, however, is leading a double life as she relives her time with Sam. In each day of her stay in Qingdao, she copies one day of his diary. Sam lived in Qingdao until he was thirteen, but Maan knows nothing about his childhood at all. Here and now, after Sam's death, Maan is finally discovering more and more about him, from moving around his childhood neighbourhood and digging up time capsules he buried when he was a kid. This sometime attracts moods of jealousy from Kit. Two other episodes add small ripples to Maan's simple existence: Tung's bittersweet relationship with her divorced husband, and an old couple next door, with the man far gone into illness.Kit finally finds the landscape for Maan, leading her to a stretch of beautiful woods in Sam's picture, covered in fresh snow. While the landscape matches exactly, Maan somehow does not feel that this is right. She gradually realises that she has been clinging to her happy past with Sam, and is afraid that once the quest is completed, everything will be gone. Lost and miserable, she does not want to see Lit again.The old man next door finally dies, and his wife carries on courageously, with her Buddhist faith as her main support. As winter turns into spring, Maan's search is brought up by chance with the old woman. Looking at the picture, she recognises the place immediately, as well as the season: the picture depicts the woods covered in lovely white plum blossom in spring. I'm not going to review the ending, other than saying that it is satisfying.This movie is beautifully acted by two of my top favourite young artists: Mainland China's LIU Ye (The Mountain Postman, Lan Yu, Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise) and Hong Kong's Karena Lam (July Rapsody, Inner Senses ). The story, when you come to think of it, is really a variation of Korea's spectacularly successful love story (disguised as a comedy) My Sassy Girl, about a girl's struggle to break away from the past to accept a new life.
A small warning lest I should mislead the readers into having false expectations: while I mentioned that Qingdao is a beautiful city, it is not depicted in a happy mood here. The bleak scenes throughout most of the movie remind me of the cheerless landscape through which Strider took the Hobbits in flight from the Ring Wraiths in the beginning of Lord of the Rings. However, in the last scene, we finally see a beautiful landscape of the lovely woods with plum blossoms in glorious profusion.
