{"id":2503,"date":"2015-03-14T05:40:37","date_gmt":"2015-03-14T10:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/~reviewing\/?page_id=2503"},"modified":"2015-03-14T05:41:03","modified_gmt":"2015-03-14T10:41:03","slug":"somewhere-is-typical-chinese-love-drama","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reviewing\/?page_id=2503","title":{"rendered":"‘Somewhere’ typical Chinese love drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted March 13, 2015<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By SIYUAN TONG<\/p>\n

Telling two love stories in Prague, the Chinese film \u201cSomewhere Only We Know\u201d came out calling itself a movie of \u201cpure love.\u201d Just as it advertised, this is a fair romantic drama.<\/p>\n

Jin Tian, the main character, a young woman who recently lost her grandmother\u2014her only relative in the world \u2014 and got dumped by her fianc\u00e9, she ran to Prague, where her grandmother once lived, to take a break and try to get rid of the pain. With the encounter of Peng Zeyang, a single father who lived with his mother and daughter, her journey of love began.<\/p>\n

A sketchbook Jin found in her grandmother\u2019s belongings and a letter for her grandmother from a man named Josef Novak several decades ago reveals another mysterious story of her grandmother\u2019s unknown past love.<\/p>\n

Though sometimes characters seem to fall in love way too fast, what happened after two couples being together is portrayed in detail.<\/p>\n

Without much other distracting content, \u201cSomewhere Only We Know\u201d is a love movie wholly focused on the love stories of Jin Tian and her grandmother Chen Lanxin.<\/p>\n

Trying not to make the movie too dull or flat, director Xu Jinglei mixed the stories of Jin Tian and Chen Lanxin. Time comes back and forth between two stories in a well-organized way without letting audience get lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomewhere Only We Know\u201d is her sixth film as a director. Xu\u2019s directing improved a lot compared to her previous work in \u201cDear Enemy\u201d and \u201cGo Lala Go,\u201d both of which feel like some random online self-made films with poor editing.<\/p>\n

Having a career as a successful actress in China after being graduated from Beijing Film Academy in 1997, Xu started directing in 2003. The style of her movies did not change much during the years \u2014 mostly love stories in different background settings, but her work does vary in an emotional way as her experiences change.<\/p>\n

Spending three years traveling around the world after feeling tired of her old life and just \u201cwant to get away and be another self,\u201d according to her interview with Lohas Magazine<\/em>, Xu started \u201cSomewhere Only We Know.\u201d Her own experience is probably why the movie was set in another country with two main characters trying to lay down their pasts and look for the future \u2014 \u201cIf I cannot let go of the past, tomorrow will never come,\u201d Jin whispers in the movie.<\/p>\n

There is nothing special to say as the prosaic storyline goes along, except the movie does look like a typical Chinese love drama.<\/p>\n

Chen and Novak, being in deep love, thought nothing could separate each other, but finally had to realize that future is always unpredictable \u2014 \u201cI was so sure we would be together, but nobody can tell what will come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jin and Peng met in another country with their own past hurts and tried to love again. As the passion cools down, reality came in such a undeniable way that they have to decide if this was just a temporary romantic encounter, or it would be a lasting love.<\/p>\n

However, the perseverance of love is always there in the movie, no matter each story ended with sorrow or joy; and this perseverance will probably touch some female audience.<\/p>\n

Another minor problem is that the whole film talks about stories in Prague, but the location does not seem to provide anything special \u2014 it is still stories about Chinese, except one of them has a Czech boyfriend.<\/p>\n

Taking the film as a whole, it is not necessarily bad or too dramatic, but there is nothing really exciting either. It is not that boring to watch and you should not lose your patience easily as the plot continues. During the film, you might laugh a bit and get touched a bit, but at the very end, no strong emotion would be established. If it is for a nothing-to-do weekend, but this is not a horrible choice to make to pass some time.<\/p>\n