A still from If You Are the One

Leaving Japan, Qin presses money on his old friend, saying "We never know when we will meet again." When his friend tries to decline the offer, Qin says "Please accept it. It's not about the money, but about friendship." After they say goodbye, there is a touching scene as the camera follows Qin's friend driving away in tears.

All in all, this 50 million yuan (about US$7,302 thousand) movie is a great achievement. It demonstrates a great improvement in the director's storytelling skills. His previous comedies like The Dream Factory (1997), Be There or Be Square (1998), Sorry Baby (1999) and Big Shot's Funeral (2001), although very funny are just clumsily structured strings of jokes, like xiang sheng (cross talk – a kind of Chinese-style comedy double act) transferred to the big screen. Especially in Big Shot's Funeral, the jokes are so intensely packed together without any real links between them that they tire the viewers out. I wondered if the director had run out of steam and inspiration. Over the last two years, Mr. Feng turned to big budget productions and directed The Banquet (2006) and Assembly (2007). I did not applaud this change of direction and regretted that Chinese cinema may be on the way to losing a good comedy director.

Director Feng Xiaogang speaks during the premiere of the movie If You Are the One in Beijing Dec. 16.

This year, with the exquisitely crafted If You Are the One, Mr. Feng has made a triumphant comeback to the comedy genre. He tells this romantic story elegantly with smart dialogue and telling observations of daily life. He voices his concerns about current society, the global financial crisis, China's plummeting stock market and the devastating Sichuan earthquake. The punch lines fit the story and appear in the right place at the right time.

Mr. Feng is confident about the prospective earnings of his movie. He told reporters at the premiere in Hangzhou on December 14 that he was not worried about box office returns even in the face of competition from movies that cost four to five times more than his, such as Forever Enthralled and Red Cliff Part II. He said he has a firm belief in his popularity among the Chinese audience and hopes his movie will take 200 million yuan (about US$29 million) in ticket sales on the Chinese mainland.

(China.org.cn December 17, 2008)