Why So Blu?

Dear You (Film Review)

Hiau-ui (Zheng Runqi) is buried in debt, and he thinks the answer may be a grandfather he has never met. Den Bhagseng (Wang Yantong) left China decades earlier and is rumored to have become rich in Thailand, where several schools now bear his name. Hiau-ui sees an answer to his money problems. His grandmother, Iap Sogriu (Wu Shaoqing), sees the husband who left her alone with three children and apparently built another life without them.

The first part of the movie is fairly light. Hiau-ui runs around Bangkok asking about Den, following rumors and repeatedly making a fool of himself. Then, holes begin to pop up in the family story. The movie pulls away from the present and settles into Den’s past, starting with his decision to flee China rather than be forced into the Civil War. Back home, the younger Sogriu (Wang Xiaohui) waits and raises their children. Den keeps telling himself the separation won’t last. It does.

The only thing holding their marriage together is the qiaopi Den sends home, or letters bundled with whatever money he can earn. In Thailand, he rents a room from Zia Lamgi (Li Sitong), a sharp, closed-off young woman trying to manage a boarding house while looking after her alcoholic father. Zia eventually helps Den write to Sogriu, and her feelings toward him become harder to sort out. In a surprisingly fresh move, the movie never forces an answer. Maybe she loves him. Maybe she is drawn to the devotion he shows his family. Maybe the two don’t have to be completely separate.

The flashbacks look convincing. The boarding house, classrooms and crowded Bangkok streets feel worn and occupied. Softer light and warmer colors separate the past from Hiau-ui’s present. There’s some wonderful texture, from smoke, sweat, old walls, cramped rooms.

Li Sitong holds most of it together, sometimes emotions being visible and sometimes not. Wang Yantong gives Den an open, likable quality, while Wang Xiaohui makes Sogriu tougher than the screenplay by Hongchun Lan, Leng Yang, Xuanxuan Zheng, and Liyun Zhu initially presents. Usha Seamkhum appears only briefly as the older Zia, bringing a lifetime into the final stretch without much dialogue.

There are some nitpicks. Hiau-ui is presented as the lead and then almost forgotten once the flashbacks take over. Years fly past before the relationships have had enough time to settle, yet other scenes overstay their welcom. 

The score constantly threatens to ruin scenes, nudging and swelling as if director Hongchun Lan doesn’t trust us to understand that something sad is happening. Den and Zia can also seem impossibly selfless, and the people threatening the Teochew community are drawn with one dimensions simplicity. 

In the end though, Dear You won me over. Lan Hongchun made it largely with inexperienced performers, in the Teochew language, around a part of immigrant history rarely treated with this much care. It became a huge success in China, and the appeal isn’t hard to understand.