Why this film is described as a "Romantic Comedy" is beyond me. Although I'm American, my wife is Chinese, and grew up in Hong Kong, and she didn't see it as a comedy either, so I don't think it's just cultural differences here.Rather, this is a film about 2 sad people...Ge You as Qin Fen is a wealthy but lonely inventor without any tact or social skills who's looking for a wife through online dating sites. And Shu Qi as Smiley, the flight attendant who is in love with a married man who will never leave his wife for her. For some reason, these two unhappy people bond with each other, and try to help each other out.I remember that Jennifer Aniston in "The Good Girl" had her looks played down, and rarely smiled. This is similar to what they did with Shu Qi in this movie. Her jaw-dropping beauty and killer smile is rarely in evidence. Although Shu's getting older, she's not that old, and this role is definitely against type for what she typically does. This is even much different than her performance in "Three Times."The film is worth a look, but unfortunately, nothing too special.

The script is great, and well structured. You Ge's buoyant character is an essence to this film's success. The serious activities of a man who is successful in business and seeks for a good marriage are funny, but convincing, still we can understand he has fallen into romance with a girl played by Qi Shu. It is also funny and interesting to see a variety of girls as his opponents from the match-making website.I heard many Chinese tourists are now visiting Hokkaido, the north most part of Japan, as the location site of the film. Actually this location is well used and effectively involved.The opening scene might look a little bit strange, and I hope the future viewers do not turn it off because of this opening. After 15 minutes, the film starts rolling and the substance is funny, light but later warm and mild.

"A sane, healthy woman," that's what Qin Fen(You Ge) is after, somebody "emotional", not the practical type. Well into his forties, this amateur inventor is remarkably self-assured and demanding for somebody this lonely. Only in the movies would a woman as beautiful as Smiley(Qi Shu) consider such an ordinary man. The flight attendant had seen Qin's ad in the personals and admired his no nonsense, almost anti-romantic description about what he's searching for. Stuck in a fatalistic relationship with a married man, Smiley wants friendship, not romance, so she follows the bald man out of the coffee shop and the rest is history. They become...platonic friends. Is it enough for Qin? No.Neither sane nor emotionally healthy, Qin makes allowances for Smiley, who has a sublime beauty that overrides the impracticality of being a consolation prize. "Fei cheng wu rao" is like an inverse of Garry Marshall's "Pretty Woman", in which the woman has the agency in their relationship. After asking Qin to marry her, Smiley sets the condition that she be allowed to keep a space in her heart for the married man. Why, the moviegoer may wonder, does Smiley restrict herself to a man she doesn't find sexually attractive? Like one of Qin's rejects(a stockbroker) says, Qin's value is depreciating. In other words, he's old and bald. But that's the movies for you, patriarchal through and through. The truth is out though, to the film's credit, in which the woman provides an honest assessment of Qin's desirability, because it punctures the movie myth that an average man can lure a ten into his heart. While neither Qin nor Smiley addresses the difference in their age, the narrative itself performs the task of batting its rhetorical eyelids at the math, indirectly, without being the least bit didactic about it.A change of scenery is the balm, Qin hopes, might be the salubrious fix-all to Smiley's broken heart, so the symbiotic couple travels to Japan, where the old man has a friend who drives his Chinese guests around Hokkaido. An unscheduled stop at a small Christian church leads to the old man divulging all of his sins to a priest. Starting with his transgressions as a small child, in a roundabout way, Qin admits his amorous feelings for Smiley is scandalous, but he never gets that far in the chronology. Worn out from Qin's unabridged cataloging of sins, the priest advises Smiley that she take her friend to the big church. To Qin, although he knows his relationship might be sinful, it's nothing that a small church can't handle in his estimation. But for others, a cross-generational pairing may seem lurid, therefore a big church is needed to absolve a big sin. While self-reflexivity is applied to the social phenomena of old man dating younger women, "Fei cheng wu rao" has nothing in common with feminism. Ultimately, the film sides with the small church, since Qin's friend lectures Smiley on the unfairness of it all, exploiting his friend's feelings with her convoluted conditions, he scolds. After all, exploitation can be a two-way street. Qin puts up with being angst-ridden because he likes his women young. It's a price he's willing to pay.Prior to their religious field trip, in the city district, the two men encounter a poster-sized photograph of four beautiful sisters, restaurant proprietors, whose erotic appeal lures them inside. To their surprise, however, the picture is out of date. They're old. Women who are out of circulation in Qin's estimation, as well as the film's ideology(The old ladies themselves laugh at their own lost sex appeal as women.) The geriatric women are the punchline to a set-up that's predicated on the filmic tradition of older virile men categorically disqualifying their female contemporaries as potential mates. The filmmaker infers that it's better for a man to be celibate than lie down with a mature woman. Sex is important to Qin, he says it's the basis for love, so when he turns down Smiley's one night of love(sex) with her, his perceived nobility of genuine emotions for the younger woman, obscures the fact that he's really just a dirty, old man.

I was surprised to see this movie that showed feelings I would have only expected in a Western film. After living in China for several weeks and feeling the large gulf between my culture in NW USA and Beijing, I found this movie quite refreshing. It showed me again that people are basically the same, given similar conditions. Dialogue was excellent - very well written and intense, although a little hard to follow by subtitles and watch the character's actions at the same time. The plot was not quite as predictable as a typical Hollywood film, which I also found refreshing. I look forward to watching more films by this director.