I Love You is a 2002 Chinese

Cinema of China

The Chinese-language cinema has three distinct historical threads: Cinema of Hong Kong, Cinema of China, and Cinema of Taiwan. Since 1949 the cinema of mainland China has operated under restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television and...

 drama film directed by Zhang Yuan

Zhang Yuan

Zhang Yuan is a Chinese film director who has been described by film scholars as a pioneering member of China's Sixth Generation of filmmakers...

 and starring Xu Jinglei

Xu Jinglei

Xu Jinglei is an actress, director and editor most famous in her native mainland China. Xu graduated from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy in 1997. Along with Zhao Wei, Zhou Xun and Zhang Ziyi, the mainland Chinese media considers her a member of the Four Young Dan actresses...

 and Tong Dawei

Tong Dawei

Tong Dawei is a Chinese actor and singer. Tong is best known for starring TV series Jade Guan-yin, Struggle and the film Lost in Beijing....

. The film was a co-production between the Xi'an Film Studio and Jewel Film Investment Company.

It is one of three films made by Zhang in 2002 (the other two being the Communist opera Jiang Jie, and the romantic comedy, Green Tea) marking one of the more prolific periods in his career. I Love You is based on author Wang Shuo

Wang Shuo

Wang Shuo is a Chinese author, director, actor, and cultural icon. He has written over 20 novels, television series and movies. His work has been translated into Japanese, French, English, Italian, and many other languages...

's novel Get a Kick and Die. Zhang would again adapt one of Wang's stories in 2006's Little Red Flowers

Little Red Flowers

Little Red Flowers is a 2006 Chinese film directed by Zhang Yuan. The film was a co-production between China's Beijing Century Good-Tidings Cultural Development Company LTD and Italy's Downtown Pictures...

.

Plot

Du Xiaoju and Wang Yi (Xu Jinglei

Xu Jinglei

Xu Jinglei is an actress, director and editor most famous in her native mainland China. Xu graduated from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy in 1997. Along with Zhao Wei, Zhou Xun and Zhang Ziyi, the mainland Chinese media considers her a member of the Four Young Dan actresses...

 and Tong Dawei

Tong Dawei

Tong Dawei is a Chinese actor and singer. Tong is best known for starring TV series Jade Guan-yin, Struggle and the film Lost in Beijing....

) are two twenty-somethings living in contemporary Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

. As the film opens, Xiaoju is about to be married to one of Yi's friends but tragedy strikes when her fiance accidentally drowns in a swimming pool shortly before the wedding. Devastated, Xiaoju becomes increasingly close to Wang Yi. The two fall in love and marry.

The honeymoon period between Xiaoju and Yi proves short, however, as Xiaoju begins to exhibit increasingly unbalanced behavior. She teases her husband about harboring a crush on her former roommate (Pan Juan), and interrogates him on his former partners. Soon the teasing erupts into public rows, much to the consternation of their friend Pan Youjun (Du Peng). As Xiaoju becomes convinced that her husband no longer loves her, her behavior become erratic and obsessive, and ultimately dangerous.

Cast

• Xu Jinglei
  Xu Jinglei
  Xu Jinglei is an actress, director and editor most famous in her native mainland China. Xu graduated from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy in 1997. Along with Zhao Wei, Zhou Xun and Zhang Ziyi, the mainland Chinese media considers her a member of the Four Young Dan actresses...
  
   as Du Xiaoju (the wife)
• Tong Dawei
  Tong Dawei
  Tong Dawei is a Chinese actor and singer. Tong is best known for starring TV series Jade Guan-yin, Struggle and the film Lost in Beijing....
  
   as Wang Yi (the husband)
• Du Peng as Pan Youjun (the married friend of Wang Yi and Du Xiaoju)
• Pan Juan as Jia Ling (Du Xiaoju's roommate at the hospital)
• Hou Junjie as Pan's wife

Production

By the early 2000s, Zhang Yuan had decided to make a romance film, a genre he had never tackled before. Upon mentioning this to his friend, author Wang Shuo

Wang Shuo

Wang Shuo is a Chinese author, director, actor, and cultural icon. He has written over 20 novels, television series and movies. His work has been translated into Japanese, French, English, Italian, and many other languages...

, the latter suggested that he adapt one of his old novels, Get a Kick and Die (sometimes translated as Live it up before You Die). Reading the book, Zhang agreed, though he moved the story's action forward from the 1980s to present day Beijing. While Zhang had worked with major authors before (notably Yu Hua and Zhu Wen

Zhu Wen (director)

Zhu Wen is a Chinese short story writer turned director.-Early life and writing:Zhu Wen was born in 1967 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province. He attended Southeast University in Nanjing, and graduated with a degree in electric power...

 in 1999's Seventeen Years

Seventeen Years (film)

Seventeen Years is a 1999 Chinese film directed by Zhang Yuan and starring Li Bingbing in her feature film debut. Seventeen Years was screened at several international film festivals where it garnered numerous accolades, including the Director's Award at the 56th Venice Film Festival.The film is...

), I Love You marked the first time Zhang would directly adapt a literary work.

Filming took only a month, and the entire shoot used only a single camera. Zhang has noted that he chose this style of filming in part to utilize long-takes. Additionally, it allowed him to focus on single characters while filming, with reactions of other characters only being implied by the reactions by the camera's subject. Even though I Love You was an adaptation, Zhang approached the film with total freedom of creativity, in part because he found the story very realistic. In an interview, Zhang noted that filming the two main characters was like shooting a documentary, noting that the shoot "recaptured the same mindset that [he] had on Sons."

Zhang has spoken about what he was attempting to capture for the film:

Reception

Unlike many of Zhang's earlier works (notably Beijing Bastards

Beijing Bastards

Beijing Bastards is a 1993 drama film by sixth generation director Zhang Yuan, and is one of the first independently produced Chinese films....

and East Palace, West Palace

East Palace, West Palace

East Palace, West Palace is a 1996 Chinese film directed by Zhang Yuan starring Hu Jun, Si Han. It is also known as Behind the Forbidden City or Behind the Palace Gates....

), I Love You was released domestically in China in late October 2002. By November 2002, I Love You had grossed nearly 10 million RMB ($1.2m), thus making it Zhang's biggest commercial success yet. Internationally, the film has also done well, premiering at many major film festivals including Sundance

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

, Rotterdam, Karlovy Vary, Deauville

Deauville Asian Film Festival

The Deauville Asian Film Festival takes place annually in Deauville, France since 1999 and focuses on Asian cinema...

, and Pusan

Pusan International Film Festival

Busan International Film Festival , held annually in Haeundae-gu, Busan , South Korea, is one of the most significant film festivals in Asia...

.

Like his previous film, Seventeen Years

Seventeen Years (film)

Seventeen Years is a 1999 Chinese film directed by Zhang Yuan and starring Li Bingbing in her feature film debut. Seventeen Years was screened at several international film festivals where it garnered numerous accolades, including the Director's Award at the 56th Venice Film Festival.The film is...

, Zhang Yuan's foray into mainstream movie making has been both praised and criticized. While Derek Elley of Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

argues that the film represents a move towards "maturity," Richard James Havis of the Hollywood Reporter takes an opposite tack, arguing that the film's lack of political grounding and mainstream nature leaves it a "cold romantic thriller" that "lacks the emotional muscle" to appeal to international audiences.

External links

• I Love You at the Chinese Movie Database