But Always (2014)

Love means having to say hello and good-bye and hello and good-bye...

As young children Zhao Yongyuan (Nicholas Tse) and Anran (Gao Yuan Yuan) both suffered tragic events after an earthquake. They met as children and we in Dramaland know what this means: D-E-S-T-I-N-Y. Though they are torn apart again and again, pass just close enough to each other without seeing the other, suffer through lack of communication and noble sacrifices galore, we as the viewers know such obstacles are no match for Destiny. Or is the evil F-A-T-E in control?

Spoilery opinions will follow so reader beware...

Yongyuan lived with his grandmother as a child, barely able to afford clothes. Anran's father provided well for her. Through one act of kindness the two children become inseparable with Yongyuan always following Anran, a heavy-handed foreshadowing. Fate tears them apart for the first time. They are offered a second chance in their twenties and yet again fate thrusts them apart. Along with broken hearts, misunderstandings and noble sacrifice the two suffer alone on different continents. Amran goes to the United States as a graduate student to Columbia (daddy must have made really good money). Yongyuan goes to jail where he learns impeccable English and how to become an international trading mogul in one year. (None of which you see.) Beijing prisons must be awesome! Anran, all alone in the US, suffers a horrible tragedy that is glossed over quickly.

They collide in the United States during their 30's where the tables have been turned. Yongyuan is outrageously wealthy and Anran can't get a job anywhere with her measly graduate medical degree from Columbia. Apparently, Daddy must have spent all his money on her Columbia degree leaving her no inheritance. Oops! Spoiler! Well, the writing was on the wall when she left for the US and he gave her his watch that stopped when her mother died. That's okay because his death is dealt with in one sentence. She washes dishes as well as being a "tour guide" for a living. Her job as tour guide entails escorting wealthy clients in clothes they provide for her and going to dinner and a show. I'll stop with the spoilery plot developments except to say through minimal conversation and no honesty between the lovers they get back together and through one of the worst tropes in Dramaland and are torn apart...again. And then again...

I'll start with what I enjoyed. The first two times they were together when they were young were quite entertaining, even moving. Nicholas Tse and Gao Yuan Yuan were lovely to look at as their young adult and adult selves and the child actors who portrayed the young lovers/friends were cute as well. Veteran actor Lam Suet made a brief appearance as YY's uncle.

What didn't work for me: The tragedy upon tragedy with no time to process them, lack of any adult communication and honesty, the heavy-handed foreshadowing for just about all the tragedies, no subtlety involved including the overwrought OST, many of the tragedies and heartache happened offscreen so there was no way for me to connect or feel any empathy with their unseen pain, Yongyuan's ridiculously fast rise to super wealth, and the fact that he waits for her and follows her for over twenty years (not including all the childhood years). It was hard to feel any sympathy for characters who kept their feelings and secrets locked down tight. The love triangle with a childish and unlikeable character was unnecessary. The writer mistook characters suffering tragedies, many of which were off-screen, as character development and reasons for the viewer to feel sorry for them.

The actual camera shots of them wandering around, alone and forlorn in China and the US would have been lovely if they hadn't blown them out to the point the film looked like it was a faded forty-year-old movie. I get they might have been going for a gauzy romantic feel, but it didn't work for me, it was one more blurry barrier to connecting with these two. When the final tragedy struck, which again was foreshadowed in the opening scene, I felt nothing but relief that the film was almost over except that I had to sit through a propaganda announcement at the end.

I need somewhat coherent and consistent plot and character development and relationship development, But Always gave me none of that. This felt more like two people who wandered into each other's lives, messed everything up when Fate wasn't hurling everything she could at them from dead parents to national disaster after national disaster (think Remember Me with Rob Pattinson, if you liked this movie, you should try that one out). All the pain and angst felt manipulative by the writer and director instead of organic to the story. They could have cut the tragedies in half, developed the characters and their dialogue, given them more realistic reactions to each other and their tragic lives and the tsunami of suffering (they missed using a tsunami!) and these gorgeous cardboard characters could have come to life. I know this is an unpopular opinion on MDL because this movie hit a lot of people in the feels, but it missed the mark with me.

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If I could only use a sentence to define this movie , it would be
' An excellent fantasy fictional longing romance '

I will say what i feel and like .
These kind of movies are needed for once in a while .
It will appeal the most to people who believe in love .
I mean with all those f**kng retard things of dating and love going on in today's world makes me sometimes wanna believe in this kinda romance and the power of it .
It's so influencing . I mean the intensity i feel right now just after I finished it is so different .

I would divide my review into 2 parts :

The start was golden .
For me the best scene was when he recognized her in the market and followed her .
I was like damn ,that's moving .

This movie ticks all the boxes if you ignore the fantasy fictional plot
~ It has the narration style , which I personally love .
~ It has the music blended right in the scene .
~ The acting is just phenomenal
~ The female lead has an angelic smile , makes your heart melt right there .
~ Outstanding cinematography .

The first half was just superb I had no complaints .
But the second half was a bit off , but what they could've done eventually it was bound to be like that .

But even with that plot, the scene were marvellous , His approach to her with that patience was awestrucking .
It was like every puzzle did fit in the end .

Sometimes you don't judge things on how rational they are , for atleast one thing I sometimes would like to believe is irrational Love .
This movie was such .
Not all movies can do this and I think the large part of credit would go to the director and ofcourse the actors .
The movie made me happy for that 1.5 hour period which is enough to rate it good . ^^

Some of my fav dialogues from this are :
~ " I don't dare dream to of being with her but still I want to do something for her "
~ "I used to hate school ,Now I think it's quiet a nice place "

Okay , the ending : Tragedy . It was overbroad so not satisfying .
But maybe it was meant to be like that .

The ending scene was awesome , They showed that he followed her from the beginning (i.e the camp) to the end .

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Sad ending always hurt though how powerful is the story or how emotional and touching love story.
An undefined bonding between two how became strong that they became habbit of each other .
Sorry means sometimes become nothing ,
Wrong decisions always lead to regressions and to make it correct sorry sometime become late.
A sweet childhood and adult story , a true connection between a two but time and situations make everything wrong ..
Only ending I don't like ....And it messed the enjoyment to watch the drama ..It is light love story only,. story has no funny moments ,story move with one flow and one emotions

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Cruel and Unusual Punishment

I had no warning. I did not do my usual research before watching this drama, and I paid the price.

The story started out so well and moved along albeit a little slowly for my taste, but I really got invested in this couple. Loved the ML's sincerity and his well-intended if a little misguided actions. The FL did a great job of acting - but I can't say the character written for her endeared me to her. She certainly paid for the decisions she made and the biggest mistake of staying with the SML.

The writers blamed Fate to write the cruel destiny of these two lovers, and I despised them (the writers) for that. The tasteful and beautifully shot intimate scenes, and the unrushed way the couple fell in love was the heart of this piece. The ML was perfect. The FL was initially silly and naïve, but she eventually gave in. I was so invested. I loved them together until she made that stupid choice... and just when I thought it would all come together, the writers threw in that agonizing twist that just about broke my heart and had me screaming at the screen.

I am so sorry I watched this drama. So sorry! I will look for this ML's other works, and I hope there are some. But as for the writers of this, I will never watch anything they produce again. Ever. Lesson learned the hard way, next time I research before I click 'watch'. This was a very painful lesson for me.

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A Romantic Debut with Bad Execution

[Written/Watched Jun 03, 2019 for Letterboxd. Expanded 1/20/2021]

(I'm going to try to expand on what I originally thought of this film.) "But, Always" is incredibly melodramatic, and I was content to write this film off as too indulgent in its sappiness. But, for the most part the relationship at the heart of the film is kind've sweet, and genuinely romantic. At some point I was genuinely convinced that this was going to be a slice-of-life romance about two childhood friends.

The hard swerve it takes near the mid-point of the story and its very end soured me on the overall product. When Zhao Yong Yuan (the protagonist) lands in legal trouble, the film goes above and beyond to keep him and An Ran (his sweetheart) separated in the most inorganic way possible. It uses the his best friend as proxy for An Ran's heartbreak, inadvertently suggesting that his best friend was envious of their relationship (but never investigates that angle). It's such a lazy way of creating conflict when his imprisonment (IIRC) would've been enough to test the foundation of their relationship. Think Barry Jenkins' "If Beale Street Could Talk".

The "antagonist" of the film, aside from the inability to properly communicate, is the class differences of the two characters. Yong Yuan is working/lower class, and An Ran is financially secure, wealthy. To some degree, Yong Yuan's lack of financial security (as the son of a "peasant" mother) drives the consequences that keep them separated. Meanwhile, An Ran (whose mother was a doctor) doesn't ever consider it because she isn't in the same bind as he is, and towards the end of the film, she even challenges his preoccupation with money (IIRC, it's been a minute, y'all).

"But, Always" asserts that Yong Yuan solves his problems by becoming wealthy, and its to that end that I hate the sudden indulgence in wealth that the film veers into with him. It's one of the things that bugs me about dramas that put such a huge emphasis on it, and the film doesn't investigate the trauma of his poverty to really justify it.

Yong Yuan becomes someone I dislike, and his actions goes against what I liked about the character to begin with. Yet the film more or less says copious amounts of money is really all this character needed to rise above his hardships and win An Ran back.

Like others have obviously mentioned (at some point), "But, Always" concludes the same way as the 2011 film "Remember Me" ( starring Pierce Brosnan and Robert Pattinson). In the process of watching the film, I initially assumed "Remember Me" was an adaptation of "But, Always", but it's just another genre film on the same wavelength of terrible ideas and not the origin point of one of the worst movies of 2011.

"But, Always" is audacious in its presumption that such a move will endear it to its audience. And maybe for those disconnected from the event and all its baggage, it did and will. For the time being (as far as the US is concerned), romantic stories using 9/11 as a backdrop or stinger for their narratives just don't land. I would argue we're just not at a place where 9/11 has become the "World War II" of historic disasters where using it as plot fodder is readily welcomed.

To that end, I would've thought one movie doing poorly on account of using the 9/11 Attacks as a plot twist would've scared off anyone else, but that's clearly not the case.

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Everything without any discrimination was awesome... Story, dialogues, acting and actors...music is exceptional and very much connected to movie which is rare in Chinese movies...
The only thing that made me feel bad was ending... It was not an ending I was expecting...she came back after 13 years of losing everything...why now why not then? I mean lil vague and that spoiled my taste...
Totally in love with main lead guy... He portrayed three different characters and portrayed so well...
If you are looking for something that strengthen your believe in fate and teach you how to get the opportunity when life gives you second chance then must watch it...

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