If You Are The One - Movie Review

Am awfully glad to finally have seen this movie right from the Poster itself, not even knowing anything about it. After all, Taiwan's Shu Qi starring as an Airline Stewardess - surely, could not be bad at all. Alas, it was not in the cards for me, as I was away on a trip when it first came out. So glad for the 2nd run movie house as am able to catch up on some movies missed.

If You Are The One is a smart romantic comedy that become the highest-grossing Chinese movie of all time. Directed by popular and world reknown Chinese director, Feng Xiaogang, the movie follows Ge You (a staple in numerous Xiaogang films), plays Qin Fen, an inventor who strikes it rich thus making him free to basically just do whatever he pleases. What's next for him? Find a wife. He promptly puts up one of the most hilariously on-line ads you’ll ever see/hear. “To avoid mutual disappointment, no PhD’s should apply. Don’t be too young. Don’t be too complicated.” It would be a sexist screed if he wasn’t also devastatingly honest about his own lack of charms. After spending a decade overseas he reports that he’s a three-strikes returnee. “No company. No stocks. No degree.” What follows is a series of 5 to 10 minute, funniest blind dates one will ever witness. The along came the ever- radiant, and a personal FAVE of mine, Shu Qi as Smiley Liang, a flight attendant with whom Qin shares a disastrous first date - but not until aftetr they shared a few drinks and confessed sob stories with each other - thinking that neither one of them will ever see each other again. WRONG!!! As later on, they happen to all be on the same flight - along with Smiley's married lover and his wife.

The two meets again when she’s at rock bottom, suffering through a tortured break-up with her married boyfriend (Alex Fong) who promised her 3 years, but can’t bring himself to leave his wife. The two wounded romantics decide to become friends & lovers, watching each others’ backs as they travel the road to romance in the beautiful city of Hokkaido. A place that holds dear memories to Smiley, as it was a place where she strarted her affair with the married man, and wehere she would like to say goodbye to it all - literally.If You Are The One pulls you in with its charms - flirting and seducing its way into your heart -- until finally, you fall head over heels in love with it. Clever storytelling, witty dialogues, luscious locales, and both leads pulling you into all sorts of emotional entanglements. You feel what they feel. It is one of those films that in lesser hands and inadequate actors - would have been just another Chinese film. But it is more than a film. Under Feng Xiaogang's direction, it gives you hope that one's past doesn’t matter. That no matter how screwed up it might be, the present is, and will always be, full of possibilities and the future looks brighter all the time.