Earlier this week I went to catch Yolo at the cinema. It's a Chinese movie that, I learned towards the end of the credits, is a remake of a 2014 Japanese movie called 100 Yen Love. Yolo has been doing very good box office in its home country, if not worldwide, and this probably explains how it ended up here in Madison.
The movie is a Bildungsfilm, I guess you could say, which chronicles the transformation of Du Leying, a woman in her early 30s, from an overweight slacker into a lean, mean boxing machine whose motto is carpe diem.
When the story opens, we find her sleeping, something she does most of the time, apparently. Unemployed and living at home, Leying has basically retreated from life into a shell. We witness her and her sister get into a fight and Leying leaves home out of spite. She gets a job at a barbecue restaurant and rents an apartment that is, shall we say, not the height of luxury. Then one day she accidentally runs into a trainer from a local boxing gym named Hao Kun and they eventually become romantically involved.
And so the first part of the movie is a romantic comedy with Hao Kun's interest slowly luring Leying into the gym and out of her shell.
With some help from his new ladyfriend behind the scenes, Hao Kun ends up at the city championship bout. However, when Leying goes into the locker room, she discovers that he has taken a large amount of money to throw the match. When she confronts him saying that he can win and that he shouldn't take the money and retire from the sport as he plans, Hao Kun becomes distraught, angry, and defensive. He eventually tells Leying that their relationship is over.
Seeing Hao Kun give up inspires Leying to engage with life even more. She vows to win at least once in her life. To this end, she trains for the next year, losing a lot of weight. After becoming a lean, mean fighting machine, she enters a match with an experienced professional. Although she loses the bout, Leying feels good about herself for finally having accomplished and won something in her life.
This romantic comedy cum Ugly Duckling/Rocky inspirational drama was fun overall. There were genuine laughs to be had and largely not cheap ones about Leying's weight. Director Jia Ling also stars as Leying and she apparently put on weight and then lost about 100 pounds for the role. There were 3 young women sitting down the row from me and I think they were Chinese as they laughed at times when I felt mildly confused about a Chinese cultural reference. There weren't many of these instances and I don't feel like I missed anything important - just a few jokes.
The Rocky theme was used during the weight loss/training montage which I felt was longer than it would have been in an American movie. There were a couple more montages that seemed to be twice as long as I'd expect from a similar domestic flick. Plus, there was the scene where Leying leaves the locker room in slow motion and walks down a hallway towards the ring for the final match. She looks at the windows that line one side of the hall which reflect her image but she sees her weightier self. Not just a couple times but lots and lots. That slo-mo walk was a short film in itself. I wonder if this common in Chinese cinema or a stylistic choice particular to the director and editor(s).
Yolo tread a lot of familiar ground and I wouldn't have gone to see it if it was an American flick. Still, I appreciated that Leying and Hao Kun didn't live happily ever after and that she didn't manage some hyper-unrealistic come from behind victory in the ring against that professional pugilist. But she was victorious despite all that. She stopped floating down the river of life and started steering her own course.
No comments:
Post a Comment