Blind date films (Personals, If You are the One, Call for Love, Fit Lover)

[character]

I guess four films don't make a subgenre, but I saw these in the last few months, and with the exception of Fit Lover, they're all pretty good. The links go to reviews (some of which are harsher than I would be).

The Personals ( Taiwan, 1998 ) The most thoughtful and internally-focussed of the bunch, perhaps because it's a woman meeting a variety of men for dates.

If You are the One ( China, 2008 ) It's hard not to like this film just from the parts: Ge You and Shu Qi as a romantic pairing. Vivian Hsu in a small part. Deadpan humor. The film gets a bit wonky at the end, but is still very, very good.

Call for Love ( China, 2007 )

Fit Lover ( China, 2008 )

These two films are from the same director (Zhang Jianya). Call for Love is a broad comedy about a man meeting a number of women through a magic cell phone. Unlike the reviewer, I often found the film funny. It's not subtle or as good as If You are the One, but it was enjoyable. Fit Lover is mainly a car commercial for the Honda Fit. In between loving shots of the car (which an angel(!) told her would help her meet 12 potential Mr. Rights), Karena Lam tries to find true love. While I'm a big fan of Karena, she's not a natural comedienne and this car commercial could have used one.

One thing worth noting about the last two films: on the DVDs I have, there is a lot of unsubtitled simplified Chinese text (signs, etc) which would probably increase the comedy factor if one could understand them.

Edited June 15, 2009 at 08:04 AM by character

[Sarpedon]

I saw If You are the One a couple weeks ago and I thoroughly enjoyed it as well. The premise at the beginning made me wonder what the heck I was getting into but once that was out of the way it turned into a great film. And I liked how it came full circle at the end. I actually laughed out loud several times (reading the subtitles.)

[renzhe]

Green Tea, (lü cha) with Zhao Wei could also fall into this category.

[Lu]

From the review of If You Are the One: 'with occasional stops at fine luxury entertainment locations, where they sip expensive drinks while verbally sparring over their views on love.' This, combined with Shu Qi as the leading lady, makes me feel I've already seen this movie and it was a complete waste of time.

[character]

@Lu -- Then you might try The Personals, as it's a much different film.

[Meng Lelan]

From the review of If You Are the One: 'with occasional stops at fine luxury entertainment locations, where they sip expensive drinks while verbally sparring over their views on love.' This, combined with Shu Qi as the leading lady, makes me feel I've already seen this movie and it was a complete waste of time.

Those relationship movies drive me mentally insane, no wonder I won't go the the movies. Aren't those called chick flicks in the States? I wonder if there's a Chinese term/equivalent for chick flicks.

[roddy]

You've also got 桃花运 - apparently a Chinese take on Love Actually, but I've never seen that, so don't know. It's a decent little film, entirely lightweight, but doesn't take itself seriously and throws up a few laughs.

[imron]

You've also got 桃花运 - apparently a Chinese take on Love Actually

This is the movie where 葛优 has hair Personally, I thought that Love Actually was just a western take on 爱情麻辣烫.

[gougou]

Aren't those called chick flicks in the States?

It would be, if the director didn't decide for no apparent reason at all to turn it into a road movie... I saw "If You Are the One" at the theater, and while it started out quite nicely and has two great actors, it seemed they only wrote the script to the middle and then improvised their way to the end (apparently Feng Xiaogang said something to that effect at Beijing Film Academy, too).