First love nostalgia in a coming of age tale adapted from a popular Chinese novel…
First love and nostalgic reminiscences on college years continue to be big business at the Chinese box office, typified by the likes of Zhao Wei’s So Young, Guo Fan’s My Old Classmate and others. Fleet of Time, based on the popular novel by writer Jiu Yuhui and directed by Zhang Yibai (Eternal Moment) is an archetypal example of the form, a tender coming of age tale featuring youthful romance, angst and the usual mix of the bitter and the sweet. Featuring a top cast including Eddie Peng (Rise of the Legend), Ni Ni (The Flowers of War), Zheng Kai (So Young), Wei Chen (Meteor Shower) and Zhang Zixuan (Love is Not Blind), despite its familiarity the film was another hit, pulling in over ¥580 million when released in December 2014.
The film opens with Chen Xun (Eddie Peng) getting drunk in a bar with his friends Zhao Ye (Zheng Kai), Qiao Ran (Wei Chen), reflecting on the long lost love of his life, Fang Hui (Ni Ni). With Zhao Ye getting married soon the memories come flooding back, and over the coming days Chen Xun remembers how he and Fang Hui met in college in the 1990s, and fell in love after he determinedly pursued her. Although their relationship gets off to a good start, reality soon intrudes, and the young couple are forced to face up to a series of challenges and difficulties on the rocky road to happiness.
As should be obvious, Fleet of Time (which was also adapted as a television series) sticks very closely indeed to the formula and never strays even a step from the well-trodden path of the form. No stranger to the romance genre, Zhang Yibai clearly knows exactly what his target audience expects, and delivers to the letter, not missing a trick when it comes to heartstring tugging and falling back on every emotional cheap shot and cliché in the book. The plot plays out entirely as expected, from the early scenes of Chen Xun’s dogged and daft wooing of the initially quiet and fragile Fang Hui through to their predictable problems and the massively unsurprising final revelation. Every aspect of the film has been seen countless times before, and Zhang doesn’t make even the slightest attempt to mix things up or add anything fresh.
Whether or not this is a bad thing is really up to the viewer, as while utterly unoriginal, Fleet of Time is undeniably very well made and as good an entry in the nostalgic romance genre as its fans could hope to find. Zhang does a fine job of serving up what his audience wants, and the film is solid and polished in all respects, with a decent script that manages to be genuinely moving in places, even for the cynics, a brisk pace and some suitably appealing visuals. Having a charismatic cast also gives things a considerable lift, and though none of the characters are particularly believable, they’re an easy bunch to root for and pleasant enough to spend a couple of hours with, the themes of friendship and loyalty being handled in a reasonably heartfelt manner. Eddie Peng and Ni Ni both turn in likeable and sympathetic performances, and the ups and downs of their relationship are engaging if not massively dramatic, and this also helps hold the viewer’s interest through to the end.
Of course, none of this is likely to make Fleet of Time terribly worthwhile for non-genre fans, and it’s definitely one chiefly for its target demographic and for aficionados of rose-tinted flashbacks and tales of innocent love. To give credit where credit’s due, Zhang Yibai directs with assurance and succeeds in his modest ambitions, and the film is certainly one of the better examples of its type from the last few years.
