Back in Time
lan Hongchun’s proved to be a hit in the city so cinemas are reaching back into his library.
Back to Love
Director: Lan Hongchun • Writers: Lan Hongchun, Yang Leng, Zheng Runqi, Guo Hongyi
Starring: Zheng Runqi, Zhong Shaoxian, Lu Shan, Lian Xilong
China • 1hr 42mins
Opens Hong Kong August 6 • IIB
Grade: B
Forgettable though it may be – and it will evaporate from your conscious mind in hours, if not minutes – Teochew director Lan Hongchun’s Back to Love | 帶你去見我媽 is a stronger film than his break-out, word-of-mouth juggernaut from earlier this year, Dear You. That was novel, and turned a spotlight on a fascinating historical document, qiaopi, but it was also over-plotted, with flashbacks within flashbacks, and a fundamental premise that was unethical at best, psychotic at worst. His 2022 family dramedy Back to Love is a more accessible film in that a shit ton of us have soldiered through the sweaty, infuriating, embarrassing or otherwise awkward moment of taking a (fingers-crossed) future spouse or partner home to meet the ’rents. Shit, Ben Stiller has made a cottage industry of it (okay four films, but it feels like 400).
Back to Love (man, that’s a terrible title) is more accessible and best of all it never had a theatrical release in Hong Kong, so given the success of Dear You, Lan’s older films are getting a chance to find an audience. Is it an easy cash grab? Sure, but at least it’s a cash grab for an indie director that’s getting some broader attention for his original work produced the way he wanted it produced. Win! It’s still incredibly diaphanous and it’s going to fly out your head almost the minute it’s over but at least it will be nice in the moment.
In-law or out-law?
And that’s precisely the way to describe Back to Love. It’s nice. It’s not challenging, it doesn’t say anything inflammatory about traditional family beliefs and/or breaking with them, and it doesn’t challenge Putonghua’s place as the national language. It’s a pleasant slice of life that ends with personal growth for several characters and a family in harmony. It doesn’t broach the idea of found or chosen families and good god there are no LGBTQ+ partners. But it’s nice, and it will remind you to call your mother. And okay, original is a fluid concept in film these days. Back to Love is an original screenplay with a unique backstory but true. It’s not an “original” idea. Family dramedy is one of the oldest genres in the book. Obsessive romance isn’t orginal either but Obsession was so you know what I mean.
Zheng Zekai (Zheng Runqi, the debt-ridden slacker in Dear You) is a Shantou boy working in Shenzhen at some kind of manufacturing facility, a typical professional migrant with one foot in his hometown Chaoshan culture and one in mainstream China. He works with his uncle on his mother’s side (Lian Xilong), who runs interference with the blind dates his mom keeps setting him up on. Uncle gets him; he’s dating a Black woman who’s taller than him. Gasp! More to the point, Zekai doesn’t need the help because he has a fiancée he’s totally into. That’s Jingshan (Lu Shan), an advertising/media/producer type who’s very cool and very smart – and very from Hangzhou. And divorced. Uh oh. Naturally taking her home to meet the family, mother Xian (Zhong Shaoxian), easier going dad (Zheng Pengsheng) and grandmother (Lian Yingzhu), is fraught with all kinds of comedy, misunderstandings, domestic drama and epiphanies.
There is zero that’s cutting edge about this film, but then again it doesn’t really have to be. There’s a wish fulfilment element at play that makes Back to Love more appealing than it has a right to be; a finale that so many of us have probably wished we could’ve had with “unacceptable” partners. There’s no doubt that Xian is going to come around after her initial resistance to the “non-local” and passive-aggressive hospitality. Zekai is never going to have to choose between families. Everyone finds a way to live alongside each other’s differences and singularities rather than in conflict with them. It’s all very utopian and party line and Lan had no intentions otherwise.
That could partly be because he has a tremendously natural and engaging non-pro cast to help the story along and he knew it. Zhong is as solid a deadpan comic actor as any that are fully trained, and she balances frustrating and out-of-touch with charmingly old school and well meaning. Xian doesn’t do what she does because she’s a bitch. She genuinely believes she’s doing right by her kids. Her slow warming to Jingshan feels real, and Lan wisely dots the film with vivid side characters that lend context and humour to the proceedings. The nosy neighbours Xian spars with are hilarious, and they go a long way to forgiving the film’s more out-dated “comedy”, chiefly the pudgy blind date and the requisite fat-shaming the pearl-clutching over the Black woman. Both are supposed to be harmless bits – and true there’s been much, much worse lately – but they clang with the otherwise astute storytelling. But then again, I think I’ve already forgotten them.