If You Are The One 2 (非誠勿擾2) Review

In Feng Xiaogang's new film, the wealthy in urban China are modern, emotional, sentimental, desirous of goods which lots money can buy, and are fully in grasp of the irony and paradoxes of contemporary China and its effects on personal relationships on a society that merely 15 years ago, still seemed to exist in a naive and restrained age.

This is why the main supporting character has a daughter with an ex-wife from a previous, seemingly more innocent age, while his latest one, after he has made his money, ends in halfhearted discontent and self deprecating dismissal.

The Chinese are changing, and most importantly the mature, pre-

midlife crisis generation urbanites who are seeing reflections of a lost time in the money they are making. It is as if the stack of RMBs they pull out of their pockets with indifference have become mirrors, mirrors that only reflect hard truth. And they want out, either free from it all, or find protection in the form of stable marriages that makes money a secondary concern in the belief that love gives money a comforting purpose. To serve love, that's money purpose.

Much of the humor and laughs of this film come from understanding the subtext in the conversations, which are both smart and playful, often filled with traditional idioms and misdirection. No surprise that this is very Beijingnese sounding film is written by Wang Shuo and Feng himself, and you can't find better people at using Chinese to its wittiest.

One can sense than Feng Xiaogang has a great relationship with his actors because the film's strongest scenes usually involve the actors at their most naturalistic, speaking as if they are truly at home. No doubt the fact that this is a sequel-Ge You and Shu Qi already have great chemistry helps, but their feisty and combative exchanges go up a few decibels compared to the first one. Stakes are higher, and there's even genuine anger in these characters, because getting to know another person always raises unexpected challenges, and it is usually at home where one drops the carefully constructed grace that one carries out on a date or a trip (the idea of grace is not standard but exists in all). Feng allows his actors to play out this dynamic exchange perfectly, and the tension in the movie is always centered around how the two lovers over come each others imperfections as they are discovered one by one.

We all know about Ge You, but Shu Qi is now quickly rising to be someone who I think can challenge Gong Li as the queen of Chinese cinema. She has the face of a beautiful woman

constantly in distress. Confident of her beauty but always needy of further flattering, a perfect woman for a man of longing ready to offer his life and love. She has certainly matured more in this film, and stand up to Ge Yous charming non-chalance with strength and fragility at all the right moments. Best of all, she is perfectly self-conscious and not at all pretentious, like Gong Li in most of her recent outings...

Finally, I wouldn't call Feng Xiaogang a man of subtlety but he

is a man of unexpected observations and usually carries out his sharpest observations in the actions of minor characters--pilots, military, cashiers, TV hosts. They are the one showing the

change in Chinese people as their country grows toward a consumer, service based economy.

On a technical level, Feng has proved himself to be a master of

genres of the highest level, and in a year in which he has two major film releases (the other one being Aftershock), I would proclaim him now a major force in world cinema with a perfect sense of the ironic construction of melodramatic moments that's been rarely seen since Douglas Sirk. For the mainstream audience, they are brought to tears, for the critic in me, I'm stunned at his carefully orchestrated mise-en-scene that's full of depth and sophistication.