Fridae

Who is Shu Qi's manager and has he gotten a raise yet? Shu Qi's latest two films, Look For A Star and now If You Are The One, are rather good. Although both are romantic comedies, they transcend the genre to say something surprisingly profound about the state of relationships today.

Look For A Star deftly balances cutesy romance with earthbound realities, while her latest If You Are The One satirises the contemporary mating game. Directed by China's leading satirist Feng Xiaogang (Big Shot's Funeral, Assembly), the latter stars the ordinary-looking Ge You as a lonely man who tries to look for love on the Internet.

He has a string of dates with women who are completely wrong for him - the pregnant woman looking for a husband, the unhappily-married wife looking for revenge, and an assortment of other mismatches. And then he meets Shu Qi, an air stewardess who is in love with a married man. Realising that she is too beautiful to love him, he offers his friendship instead. But can he stop himself from loving her?

Director Feng Xiaogang has much to say about modern love. It seems that money is now the obsession of new capitalist China, and true love has taken a backseat. Marriage has become a barter trade between a man and a woman - a man provides money and stability, a woman satisfies him with her beauty.

Despite these sly observations, If You Are The One cops out at the end with a conventional happy ending that doesn't do justice to what preceded it. Still, the film is a dose of freshness that's rare among romantic comedies.