“Beijing is Beijing, no need to romanticise it,” according to the practically minded heroine of Zhao Badou’s romantic odyssey, Crossing a Dawn (今晚正好, jīnwǎn zhènghǎo). A little less zany than 2012’s similarly themed Lacuna, the heroes of Zhao’s tale of city serendipity are in their own ways yearning to believe in something beyond urban cynicism with its lack of affordable housing, dissatisfying dating app romance, scammers, and pressure to conform to socially defined notions of success.
In their own ways, Qiu (Ma Sichun) and Yuzhou (Edward Chen) are each displaced people struggling to get a foothold in the city. They spend the entire night wandering around in part because they can’t find anywhere to hook up. For various reasons that only will be disclosed in a final moment of mutual vulnerability, neither than take the other one home while they’re kicked out of a hotel when a receptionist figures out what they were planning on doing there. An attempt to borrow a friend’s apartment is also frustrated, firstly by nosy neighbours and the need to avoid waking her roommate, and then by the friend coming home unexpectedly after catching her boyfriend with another girl. Tinting (Lv Xingchen) hadn’t wanted to move in with him to preserve her own space and independence, only for him to complain it made him feel “insecure”.
Qiu may seem cynical and materialistic, but in another way she is trying to exert a degree of control by asserting dominance over her dating life. Perhaps bearing out the superficiality of dating app culture, she seems to go for conventionality handsome men but is generally disappointed. This one wants to meet her in a supermarket, for some reason, but turns out to have been using an outdated photo. Qiu feels as if she’s once again been “scammed” by this duplicitous city, though her would be date may have an ironic point about ageism. He complains that he’s done a lot of interesting things in his life and is still the fun-loving and adventurous person he was in his youth, but no one gives him a chance. Qiu is saved from this encounter by Yuzhou, in the supermarket in search of somewhere to return his power bank, though their criticism of him turns out to be somewhat hypocritical given the extent to which both he and Qiu are misrepresenting themselves. After all, as Qiu later reflects, who can resist the temptation to make out their lives are a little more impressive than they really are if it’s just going to be for one night?
It’s clear that Qiu isn’t really looking for anything more than that. Her constant references to making money may seem cynical but also hint at the extent to which money is the only thing that can be relied on in this environment, even if others may try to con it out of you. Her desire to own her own apartment is symbolic of that root herself in this city and carve out a domestic space that’s hers alone. Yuzhou, meanwhile, says he prefers renting because it offers more freedom. In contrast to Qiu’s straightforward practicality, he is more soulful and romantic, countering Qiu’s desire for ownership by suggesting that the place doesn’t matter as long as you get to live with the person you love.
Qiu may not, however, be quite as cynical as she seems so much as she is afraid to trust in this moment of city serendipity. Beijing beats you down, she says, like the woman still looking for a dog who went missing a year ago driven out of her mind by loneliness and disillusionment. Yuzhou has been here two years, but feels as if he’s achieved less than nothing. Their long walk through the city takes them from walk-up, multiple occupancy apartments to a vast, unoccupied mansion full of unused rooms watched over by one of Qiu’s previous hookups whose name she never found out. He too is experiencing romantic drama with a free-spirited young woman equally afraid to face her feelings. As the night wears on, the pair begin to generate a kind of intimacy that paves the way towards emotional authenticity. Whether this one magical night in the city, or the beginning of something more, they have at least crossed their own kind of dawn, now less guarded and more open to the possibilities of the world around them.
Trailer (Simplified Chinese & English subtitles)
Like the rest of the world, China, or a given generation at least, may be finding itself at something of a crossroads. The past few years have seen a flurry of coming of age dramas in which the melancholy and middle-aged revisit lost love from their youth but Derek Tsang’s Soul Mate (七月与安生, Qīyuè yǔ Anshēng) seems to be speaking to an older kind of melodrama in its examination of passionate friendship pulled apart by time, tragedy, and unspoken emotion. The story is an old one, but Tsang tells it well as its twin heroines maintain their intense, elemental connection even whilst cruelly separated.
Windows on Worlds 