Q Series: Have You Ever Fallen In Love, Miss Jiang? (2016)

This movie gets a three hanky rating for being genuinely moving. The story was well written with the characters being introduced a little at a time, and all of them were three dimensional and interesting. The first two episodes are difficult to get through because this is a complex story and many characters are introduced rather quickly, which is a little confusing. Also confusing are the number of characters with similar names, or names which sound extremely similar when spoken. All that aside, I thought this was worth watching, and that it was quite thought provoking.

The acting was outstanding, understated enough to be intriguing; support roles as well as leads were well-cast and performed excellently. . I can't think of a single one who wasn't bang on target with their characters. They were good, bad, mean, greedy, kind, confused, naive, jaded, crooked, honest,weak, strong, and so on, leading to a very realistic community of roles portraying middle/lower middle class flawed people.

The music was sweet and unobtrusive while still giving meaning when used. I thought the settings were particularly well-chosen… and contributed to the feeling of authenticity. e.

Each individual scene revealed a little more about the character(s), sometimes misleading, sometimes foreshadowing, and pretty much all of them were disturbing on some level. That last is important because it kept me interested, wondering where that particular "thing" was going. There are only 6 episodes, and I needed to watch all of them to see how the characters' actions and traits wove together, affected each other, and played out in the conclusion, which was very solid and believable. I really, really enjoyed the lack of stereotypes, and that all the adults acted like adults, and the children acted like children.

Relationships are also important in this series, and they help explain how characters evolved. This is a gritty, interesting, worthwhile show. Not recommended for children.

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