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EVER SINCE WE LOVE: No Regrets For Our Youth

EVER SINCE WE LOVE: No Regrets For Our Youth

EVER SINCE WE LOVE: No Regrets For Our Youth

The fourth collaboration between one of China’s most prominent women directors, Li Yu (Lost in Beijing, Buddha Mountain), and one of the country’s biggest movie stars, Fan Bingbing (soon to be seen in the all-star international spy thriller The 355), has now arrived on DVD and VOD in the United States. Ever Since We Love chronicles the messy coming-of-age of a young man studying at China’s top medical college who finds himself torn between three different romantic interests-slash-archetypes: the hometown first love, the practical college girlfriend, and the mysterious older woman. There’s not much here that hasn’t been seen before in other, better movies, but Lis imaginative direction and Fan’s smoldering performance as the femme fatale who catches the eye of our young hero help elevate the story above mere mediocrity.

Youthful Indiscretions

Adapted from the novel by Feng Teng, Ever Since We Love follows Qiu Shui (pop star-turned-actor Han Geng) as he looks back on his youth from the vantage point of the present. His focus? The 1990s, when Shui was attending a prestigious medical school and dating a fellow student, Bai Lu (Qi Xi). Despite the steady, serious nature of their relationship, Shui can’t quite tear his thoughts away from his nostalgia-tinted memories of his first love. This former girlfriend recently started calling him on the phone, and while he angrily hangs up on her every time, he can’t help but be haunted by the resurgence of her presence in his life.

EVER SINCE WE LOVE: No Regrets For Our Youth
source: Cheng Cheng Films

Shui’s life is turned further upside down when he meets Liu Qing (Fan Bingbing), a beautiful older woman who is in the business of importing medical devices. Their oddball meet-cute turns first into friendship and then into a passionate love affair, distracting Shui from school and destroying his relationship with Lu. As Shui’s world devolves into chaos, and the various women in his life come and go, he quickly learns that real life never works out according to one’s plans—but that doesn’t mean that things won’t still work out for the best.

Three Women

Li takes a relatively standard story of youthful misadventure and romantic melodrama and adds plenty of visual flair, using the imagery and terminology of medical textbooks to introduce Shui, his friends, and their various problems. (One’s a virgin in love with a classmate who only has eyes for their professor, naturally.) While the slapstick humor of many scenes, particularly those in the classroom, doesn’t quite work, Li at least makes sure they look good, which is more than one can say for a lot of contemporary comedies. In addition, by filtering such a male-centered story through a female gaze, Li also tempers the natural misogyny that can pervade such a tale. The women who move in and out of Shui’s life are just as vibrant and interesting, if not more so than the man who loves them, and all of them teach him important lessons on the road to adulthood.

Really, that’s the biggest problem with Ever Since We Love: it’s a little too hard to believe that any of these complicated, attractive women would be this crazy about such a decidedly average man. As the beautiful older woman who shows Shui what real, adult love is, Fan steals the film right out from under poor Han; overflowing with charisma and sensuality, she slinks into Shui’s life, full of secrets, and shakes it up until it explodes. And while Qing initially appears to be a femme fatale straight out of the old Hollywood mold, Fan invests her with sensitivity and vulnerability that defy such stereotypes.

EVER SINCE WE LOVE: No Regrets For Our Youth
source: Cheng Cheng Films

Credit is also due to Qi for her surprisingly complex performance as Shui’s college girlfriend, Lu. It would be all too easy to root against this pushy, overbearing young woman in Shui’s life, but Qi peels back the prickly outer layers to reveal an inner softness that cannot help but summon one’s empathy. When Lu storms into Qing’s apartment to confront Shui and Qing over dinner, her behavior is borderline grotesque; Lu sits down to their meal and proceeds to inhale it messily, getting food all over her face in defiance of her polite hostess, who seems more bemused than offended. But as Lu makes this desperate, last-ditch chance to hold onto the man whom she thought was going to be her future, one sees how much pain she is in and instantly forgives her.

Conclusion

It might primarily tell a man’s story, but it’s the women—both in front of and behind the camera—that make Ever Since We Love worth watching.

What do you think? Are you a fan of Fan Bingbing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Ever Since We Love was released on DVD and VOD in the U.S. on December 14, 2021.


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