Does a Youth Film Have to Claim Everyone's Youth? Maybe "Mine" Is Enough

"When we look back on our youth, even the stupid things we remember are beautiful. We would never say, 'Hey, how many abortions did I have?' You know what I mean?" That is what the director of Our Times told us when we interviewed her.

"Did you cry?" If someone asks what you thought of Our Times, that is very likely how they will open. The campus youth film, directed by the Taiwanese newcomer Chen Yushan, has been in cinemas for nine days and has grossed more than 170 million yuan. It has become the biggest "surprise" in theaters right now.

The "surprise" is not the box office. The film has already overtaken You Are the Apple of My Eye, a big hit in its day, but by the numbers alone 170 million yuan is only a passing grade in the youth-film market: Left Ear grossed more than 400 million yuan, Fleet of Time nearly 600 million and So Young 700 million. Yet none of those "high-grossing" films drew audiences in the way Our Times does.

Nor is the plot fresh or the story new. The synopsis of Our Times is as plain and clichéd as its title: two losers, the "school bully" Xu Taiyu and the "nobody girl" Lin Zhenxin, form an alliance of the lovelorn to break up the school's golden couple, Ouyang Feifan and Tao Minmin. Once they succeed, they find they have quietly fallen for each other, but that year's romance ends abruptly because of distance, and each of their lives slides into one ordinary day after another.

The "surprise" the cinema chains mean is word of mouth, the kind of exchange quoted at the top. Since the film opened, its reputation has climbed steadily, and the reviews are almost all positive. More than 56,000 people have rated it on Douban, and it still averages a high 8.3. Short reviews such as "Extremely clichéd, but extremely watchable," "Insanely corny, and I cried my eyes out" and "Well told, so even an old story is worth watching" are common, and many of them are top reviews, so much so that the dissenters have to ask, "Am I the only one who thinks this film is just average?"

The word of mouth is this good mainly, we would say, because the word of mouth for similar films was so bad. In recent years films such as So Young, Fleet of Time and My Old Classmate have often opened with a class reunion many years later, sighing over how time has passed and how things and people have changed. Couples break up either because someone failed the college entrance exam or because of money, and cheating, catfights and abortions have become the most common, even central, elements of the youth film. Audiences find it hard to see themselves in this atypical "cruel youth," and feel the films try too hard.

In our interview, Chen Yushan, the director of Our Times, described mainland youth films as "shocking," citing "the blood on the snow in So Young, the oppressive, gloomy classroom shots" and so on. For a while she even believed these things were real. As for the fierce criticism of mainland youth films, she guessed that most are adapted from novels and need dramatic conflict, which is why they are so melodramatic.

"(In fact) as long as a youth film has people and an era, some audience will want to see it. But if it does not reflect the youth of most people and yet claims to be everyone's youth, that is probably one reason domestic youth films get slammed," Chen said.

Where mainland films splash on the melodrama, Chen tried to make hers as normal as possible. The heroine is no goddess; her look is modeled on the girl next door, "as ordinary as can be." The film does not contain a single hug or kiss. "Why do audiences still cry? Because when a girl thinks back to her first love, this is all it was," Chen said.

Before directing films, Chen was a "godmother" among Taiwanese idol-drama producers and executive producers. She launched many series known across the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, such as Lavender in 2001, which aired only half a year after Meteor Garden, the Chai Zhiping production that founded the idol-drama genre. Her other signature works include Prince Turns to Frog, Queen of No Marriage and Fated to Love You.

A producer's thrifty, efficient way of thinking has become her "professional habit." While shooting the film she kept switching among the minds of producer, director and audience, and the question of how to make the film commercial quietly worked its way into her practice.

"At first (I) wanted to tell the story of every boy's and girl's first love. Then I thought, (if I) told only that, would people my age go to see it?" Chen thought probably not. "So I added the period recreation, (and that way) it concerned them. (But) once I had added it, I started worrying again: would young people find it a barrier?" Chen called her producer's instinct "greedy": she wants a lot of things.

Once viewers snap out of the sweet campus romance, it is not hard to see Chen's commercial thinking, including her little scheme to "make up for the audience's regrets and please them."

The happy ending is the most obvious sign. "Do you go to the cinema for regret? If this film ended in regret, I don't know how much less it would gross..." As for the cameos by Joe Chen and Jerry Yan at the end, Chen said that, first, it was again a commercial decision, since stars bring more surprises; second, the young leads Darren Wang and Vivian Sung had in fact been tested for those scenes, but they were too young and it did not work.

In the first post on his WeChat account "After Resurrection," the film critic magasa analyzed the secrets of the success of Our Times, arguing that the film offers female viewers three highly attractive male types: the perfect idol Andy Lau; the harmless model-student senior Ouyang Feifan; and the "school bully" Xu Taiyu, domineering and wicked on the outside but sensitive and kind within. Between them, these three characters satisfy every romantic longing a girl has.

Chen even put Shen Jiayi from You Are the Apple of My Eye into the film as a joke. She hopes the boys who come with their girlfriends will understand that, in girls' eyes, Shen Jiayi is nothing special.

Chen cares a great deal about how people react to the film. At the start of our interview she asked us a string of questions: Have you seen the film? Did you like it? Oh, you cried? Was that because of the story, or because of yourself? She also shared many details of Our Times and her views on youth films. The line that struck me most was this: "When we look back on our youth, even the stupid things we remember are beautiful. We would never say, 'Hey, how many abortions did I have?' You know what I mean?"

Q = QDaily

C = Chen Yushan

Q: You keep using the word "recreation" for the details in the film. Where did they all come from?

C: What I wanted was "recreation": bringing things back exactly as they were and showing them to you. I did not want to be sentimental or twee. Take Lin Zhenxin's room. That is probably what most ordinary girls' rooms look like before they have a boyfriend: things go wherever they land. Most girls are basically messy. I am.

Then there is the Ice Palace. Taipei no longer has a quad-skate roller rink, so we built that set ourselves. The place where they watch the Andy Lau film has not changed in more than 20 years. Then the desks and chairs at school, the wall bulletins at the back and the graffiti. Classrooms back then had portraits and sayings of great men. I remember Dragon Ball was popular, and I once stuck dragon scales on our blackboard bulletin. That dragon won us third place in the classroom-decoration contest.

When I skipped class to go to the Ice Palace, what music did I have to listen to? Rap was huge then, so it might have been MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This," and also Alex To, though I did not use his songs in the film. There had to be Hong Kong stars like the "Four Heavenly Kings." As for TV drama, Japan was the strongest. We all watched Yuji Oda, Tomoya Nagase and Shonentai, so Xu Taiyu's whole look was based on Japanese icons.

Q: Many people say Xu Taiyu looks as if he walked out of a Japanese manga. Was that deliberate?

C: Xu Taiyu is modeled on the vain gang leader who never studies and spends all his time putting gel in his hair. In that era, the bad students in Japan's Crows, the biker gangs, the kids on motorbikes, all looked like that. When he first appears he wears a black tank top, which is also deliberate. So is the hair. Later (we) felt his forehead looked a bit bare, so we gave him two "cockroach feelers," two long strands of hair. Japanese stars blow-dried their hair like that back then, and many Hong Kong stars followed the Japanese style.

Q: Then why turn him into a "top student" later on? Were you trying to make the character more perfect?

C: It was not about making him more perfect. It was mainly about his connection to Ouyang Feifan: how does a person give up on himself? If he can give up even on himself, who do you think he would care about?

I set him up as someone who thinks nothing of toying with other people. Xu Taiyu bullies people, shuts a classmate in a barrel and rolls it. How is that perfect? I actually cut a lot of his bullying shots. Darren Wang especially loved those scenes.

Q: Why did you cut them?

C: There was not enough room for so much. I felt the junkyard scene was enough; you do not need three things to say the same thing. And if you see it a second time, knowing the plot, you will notice a lot of the lines and setups. Why does Ouyang call Xu Taiyu a "spineless guy"? Why does Xu Taiyu cry when he pulls Lin Zhenxin out of the water? At the time you might think it was because of Tao Minmin, because of heartbreak, but it was not. If you see it again, you will find it was all designed. What I really hope is that you notice none of it the first time, and then on the second viewing find traces everywhere.

Film differs from TV drama in that a film is lean. There should not be a single wasted shot, whereas TV has more room. So you have to choose more carefully: in limited time, what do you mean to show the audience and what not? How do you want them to see it?

With this film, my aim was to entertain the audience. I wanted to please them. Entertainment may just mean making you cry and making you laugh. Why do people go to the cinema? Eighty percent of the time, to be entertained. Nobody goes to be educated or lectured, right?

Q: So what does a youth film like this have to give its audience?

C: Young people watch the story; people with some life behind them watch for nostalgia.

Because I came up as a producer and executive producer, I can't help thinking from the investment side: at the very least, don't lose money. One question is whether you can use newcomers, instead of the same names on the cast list every time. From making idol dramas I know newcomers need a few more shots and need their strengths magnified. They may not be able to give a range of performances, but they can always merge with the character and have their strengths magnified without limit.

I think Vivian Sung is an actress who has been made into an idol. In Cafe. Waiting. Love she is a goddess, which appeals to boys, not girls. How do I make ordinary girls like me see themselves in her?

When I saw Vivian Sung, I felt very good about her, because the girl next door to me looked just like her. She even had stray eyebrow hairs. Back then you didn't know how to shape your eyebrows, your skin had freckles, you couldn't buy eyebrow pencil or eyeliner at Watsons, and there was no Korean plastic-surgery look, so we made her as ordinary as possible.

Once the look was right, I broke down the way she walks and talks. Why does Lin Zhenxin keep falling over? You can't have her fall just for the sake of falling. Is she absent-minded, are her glasses never clean, or is her balance poor? All of that has to be worked out.

Only later did I learn that Vivian Sung was very worried: everyone else was playing goddesses, so would she lose a lot of fans? I promised her she would gain a lot of female fans, because girls would identify with her. Do you know how many female idols struggle to win over female audiences?

Q: Besides using newcomers, what else did you build in especially to satisfy the audience?

C: Have you noticed that a lot in the film was never in the script, but was something I imagined? For example, when they decide to tail Tao Minmin and Ouyang, the script says only "they tail them," but I shot it like Mission: Impossible, the two of them following as if they were tailing an international drug lord, and the two "drug lords" seem to sense that someone is after them. When I was rehearsing, I felt that a tailing scene isn't hard to shoot, but it isn't fun: people just follow each other around, at most someone turns around and ducks into a corner. But these two dimwits take it so seriously. Have you noticed that these two losers take everything seriously? Seriously funny, really very stupid, but you laugh at them without thinking.

My comedy relies more on surprise: you didn't see it coming, and then you laugh, you cry.

When I go through a script, I usually put my own feelings into it. If right now I am the director, the screenwriter, the character and the audience, what do I want to give the audience? If I feel the audience has already... understood for a while, what expectation do I give them now? I give them the expectation, and then I shatter it.

Q: How do you think about whether audiences see themselves in a film?

C: Maybe after watching, the audience doesn't even know what the script was; they don't know what I wanted to say.

I have learned to accept that in a cinema it is always an exchange between the director's emotions and the audience's: what the director wants to give, what the audience wants to give back, crying or laughing, sobbing, gasping. Some of it I calculated, and some of it I couldn't.

But the most basic thing is whether you told the story clearly. That is what I believe I focus on. It covers a lot: the acting, the art direction, design, styling, how the lines are delivered. Sometimes the way the actors talked didn't sound like the 1990s to me. Back then nobody said "super awesome." In that era it was "you're so cheap," "you look so sorry," "you look so patriotic" or "so safe," meaning plain. Nobody talks like that now, but people did then.

Q: Have you thought about this film's audience, new viewers who come in without that context?

C: They can just watch the story. Even the Andy Lau concert isn't the point.

And what do grown-ups watch for? Nostalgia: their memories, their youth. I can't say that's all of it, but at least when they see the pager, see the surroundings, they will feel a pang, and that's enough.

I'm actually very greedy, and here I am talking about my producer's instinct again.

At first I wanted to tell a story about first love, the first love of every (or most) boys and girls. Then I thought, if I told only that, would people my age go to see it? Probably not. So I added the period recreation, and then it concerned them. Once I had added it, I started worrying again: would young people find it a barrier? So I showed it to my son. He is 16, and his favorite film is Forrest Gump, which is a thoroughly commercial film but has a profound point of view.

I had him read the script and watch every cut. My son said "not bad." I asked whether the songs would get in the way, whether he would dislike them, and he said it didn't matter; he was just watching the story. So my takeaway was that what's needed is a good story. Nothing should get in the way of watching it, but adults watch for more than the story. The story is the basis, and they may want more.

Yet you will find in it that we share the same confusion and shyness about youth, the same rebellion against the education system, even though 20 or 30 years have passed. Before mobile phones, disappearing was easy; now you can find anyone just by going on Weibo. Where is the beauty in distance? When he reads your message and doesn't reply, doesn't it hurt? In their day there was the beauty of waiting, and there were many rituals. When you decided to write a letter, how long did you spend thinking about her? Did you have to pick the stationery, the pattern, the scent, which poem to copy out? How long did all that take?

Now everything is fast. A quick "ah, so touching," and off it goes. The next line, "ah, this is so funny," and it's gone. Too brief, too fast, never deep. So why does everyone keep missing that era? Why do people go on and on about their youth? Because it went deep, like a film, with unforgettable shots that keep replaying.

Maybe beautiful things never come back. Maybe it is precisely because they can't come back that we miss them.

Q: You mentioned drama and fun just now. How do you balance dramatic effect against melodrama, and how do you judge how much is enough? Do you worry that too much melodrama goes over the top, but without it the film is too flat?

C: I have been in this business for many years, and at times I have to split into different personalities: screenwriter, producer, audience, character. If a character is set up clearly enough, he will carry the plot along, and there are lines that character simply wouldn't say. It comes down to whether you have thought the character through.

Within the characters and plot you have set up, the audience brings its own life experience and expectations. Even if a character is going to lose it today, you have to give enough reason to convince them, or the audience will say "that's ridiculous."

You might think you just need some drama, so let's have a car crash. A car crash is the cheapest trick. Bumping into someone or overhearing a conversation are also the cheapest. Don't you think? Even eavesdropping has to make sense. Someone eavesdrops the moment they step out, and then the whole world knows? Why not just post it on Weibo?

So how do I judge it? I know some of it is exaggerated, but it depends entirely on a consistent logic in your head, and it has to pay off. For example, when Lin Zhenxin comes out of the discipline office, sees Ouyang and starts gesturing to her classmates, that wasn't in the earlier script either. But I looked at it and felt that a plain "shh" was awkward, while not being able to get the words out was funny, so we just did it that way: it happens before you have time to wonder whether it makes sense, everyone laughs, and that's OK. Does it make sense for Stephen Chow to talk to a cockroach? Why do the people around him believe it? Because he is so serious.

Q: And she is kind.

C: She is kind because every one of us thinks we are kind, so we all feel we are Lin Zhenxin. Everyone is also a little bit wicked, so we can accept the things Lin Zhenxin does, like sending a chain letter. People aren't perfect, and not one character in the film is perfect.

Q: The ending is a happy reunion, almost too perfect. Was that deliberate? Why not leave an ending with a touch of regret, like You Are the Apple of My Eye? Or an open ending where they don't end up together, like Touch of the Light?

C: Well, do you like this happy ending?

Our lives are not complete, (and) film is a dream machine. I know creators have their regrets, but I still wanted everyone to be happy, to be rewarded for their expectations. I hope the audience leaves the cinema satisfied, not thinking, "Why didn't they end up together! My life is already this miserable, and now this!"

Q: Does a youth film have to be set on a campus? Are the two the same thing?

C: No. It's just that first love tends to happen on campus.

Q: Then do you think Monga counts as a youth film?

C: No, that's not my youth. My youth had no prostitutes or gangsters.

Q: So you think youth films are tied more closely to personal experience?

C: Each person, most people, have their own personal state. With Monga, you still feel it is someone else's story, not your own, right? To me it is a genre film.

Q: Do you think American Dreams in China is a youth film?

C: Of course not. It's an inspirational film, a drama. It is mainly about how they rose to success, and the film doesn't say how beautiful youth is. Actually I don't know why everyone thinks my film is a youth film, because I think of it as a comedy and a romance (laughs).

Q: Have you seen the mainland youth films of recent years? What do you make of the mainland youth films adapted from novels?

C: I haven't seen them all, but what I've observed is probably much the same as what you've observed. For a while I thought they all showed your real youth. The image of blood dripping on the snow in So Young, for example, shocked me. How could it be so twisted? How could life turn out like that? I wondered whether it felt so oppressive because that era was less open. The lighting in these films is rather gloomy too.

Maybe novels need dramatic conflict. Maybe the writers had heard of some (cruel) things like that, but that kind of youth is still a minority, right? Most people don't remember their youth that way. That is not (the youth) I understand. When ordinary people talk about youth, they usually look back after gaining some experience, always from a higher, more mature vantage point.

Actually, with "youth," once you name the era, the setting appears. Then you just set up (the story), put the right people in it, get the look right, and (shooting it) isn't hard. It's just being 18, isn't it? What's hard is making the story and the set pieces resonate with the audience.

When people watch youth films, they first look (in the film) for what they want. But when a group of girls talk about their youth, they laugh even as they tell the stupidest stories. We would never say, "Hey, I had a few abortions." You know what I mean?

My youth had its gloom too: being dumped, being misunderstood. That part is the same for everyone. It's just that when you look back, you shouldn't remember only the bad parts, right? There may be things you don't want to tell anyone, but you especially want to talk about the good times. Why? Is it that you once had something you no longer have? Why do people like to look back at history? Perhaps because that stretch of history was especially enchanting, and people always like to remember good things.

Q: Do you think the youth-film market isn't saturated yet? As you said earlier, you wondered why nobody was making this kind of youth film?

C: If you ask me, there is still a lot to say. First, so many emblems of the 1990s still haven't been put on screen. Second, I think you could explore something else from a boy's perspective; it doesn't have to be done the way You Are the Apple of My Eye did it. What about ordinary boys? Do they only chase Shen Jiayi?

Why did I want to show Lin Zhenxin and Xu Taiyu grown up? The film would work without (their adult story), right? But perhaps you are just like Lin Zhenxin, stuck and unable to move. So why do we miss the past? (Because) the time you thought was the least free (your school years) often turns out to be the freest. Back then we were all desperate to prove who we were, and now we feel less and less like ourselves. Why? That's a hard question to answer, but everyone will think of something.

Q: Many people say romance films and youth films are easy to make, that there are set formulas. Do you agree? What's your view?

C: Are you easily moved by romance films? Romance films have lasted until today, but how many classic scenes can you recall every time? Not many. So these films are not easy to make. Romance films are not complicated, but making one that endures is hard.