Great Wall, My Love
Director:
Emily Yi-ming Lin
Year:
2011
Rating:
6.5
This is a sweet innocent romance from Taiwan that also serves as a travelogue,
road movie and a bridge between Taiwan and the Mainland. It has elements
of sentimentality, comedy and ultimately and unexpectedly sadness. But mostly
it has Cherrie Ying front and center. Which may not get many that excited
but I was a fan when she was very active in the first decade of the century.
She is from Taiwan, spent years as a child in the USA, came to Hong Kong
to model and like a canon was shot into films. Right into some big ones -
Full Time Killer, Fat Choi Spirit, Visible Secret II, My Left Eye Sees Ghosts
and Throw Down. Not a bad start for someone with no acting experience but
she had a face that just was extremely likable. Then she married Jordan Chan
and her career slowed down. Her last film was 2019 - White Storm II. She
is great here as she bounces emotionally back and forth like a rubber ball.
Chun (Cherrie) lives with her parents in Taipei. She is 28 and an unsuccessful
comic book author. Her father wants to go visit the Great Wall and his town
where he was born, He had left China after the Civil War and settled in Taiwan.
But his true agenda is to find the girlfriend that he left behind with a
promise to return. He wants to apologize to her. He asks Chun to come with
him but she begs off, so he goes on his own. On the train he meets up with
a young man Mingdi (Dawei Tong - Red Cliff I & II) and they become friends.
Mingdi is a private detective who finds people or keeps tabs on people. He
is on a divorce case. They are both on the Great Wall when the father has
a heart attack and lands in the hospital. Chun and her mother get to his
bedside when he tells them that he wanted to find his first love. And dies.
Chun feeling guilty for being a poor daughter decides to fulfill his wish
and the mother hires Mingdi to help her. Like all romantic comedies there
is antagonism that slowly becomes something else. The first love does not
turn out to be easy to find as they have the wrong name and only a photo
of her. Their travel across northern China gives the cinematographer some
stunning landscapes to work with. The film has no edges - everyone they meet
is warm and welcoming - even while in the desert after their car has broken
down they meet a couple who take them in and feed them and tell them of their
daughter who left home and has never come back - what is happening all over
rural China. But the film is so good natured and the actors have such fine
chemistry that it slowly pulls you in and you really don't care if it is
as much a picture postcard as a film. Soft as a comfy couch but that is ok.
It is directed by Emily Yi-Ming Liu, who interestingly helped produce Ang
Li's first film Pushing Hands.
