A Little Red Flower (2020)

Pain shared is pain halved

When one knows one's end is coming, how would life seem but a painful wait for a seemingly inevitable truth...Then, does hope seem like a foolish comfort that entices only to disappoint or a powerful tool that inspires to do the impossible, making one reckless and irrational but also fearless and bold...

The story revolves around Wei Yi Hang, a bitter and disillusioned teen and at the time the film begins, it has been two years since he has had an operation for a brain tumor...No longer in high school, he has no friends his own age and he just sees his parents struggle financially covering for his treatment, frustrated with his helplessness he often snaps at those around him and hates the fact those in the cancer support group he goes to, try to find meaning in what he believes is a pointless existence...In one of those meetings he meets Ma Xiaoyuan a girl his age who is direct and outgoing, and is quite unfazed by cancer as a whole...she slowly and steadily makes him appreciate what he has and in the process makes him want to make the best out of his situation...

Jackson Yi is good but is saddled with a self centered adolescent role who is hardly given a chance to redeem himself...I hoped for more character development for the male lead as I failed to sympathize with his response to the people around him who went out of their way to cater to his every whim...Liu Hao Cun was extremely good, both the character she played and her acting were real and unabashed, giving this film its best moments...

The story is pretty standard and seems to have been heavily inspired by the plot of The Fault in our Stars, but pales into nothingness doing so...The shots are beautiful and the cinematography is aesthetically pleasing to the eyes and soul...The direction is a tad slow but the scenes are shot cleverly and are quite well executed...As for the screenwriting, the characters lack depth and the film leaves me wanting more...it could have been done with more brevity for the plot they had in mind...

Overall it is an enjoyable watch and does justice to showing how the people around those suffering or the ones left behind, cope with the sense of doom and come to terms with what cannot be helped...A little restrained but otherwise heart warming and emotional with a deeper take on life!

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*cries*

SURE, the storyline is pretty predictable and doesn't add much to the terminal illness trope overall, but there's something about the aura or the messages of this movie that made me love it. I guess I'm rating this more emotionally rather than objectively just because this movie made me feel so many FEELS.

STORY (9/10)
As stated above, the plot is pretty predictable. I bet you could guess what happens in the movie right now, actually. It's also unfortunate that they couldn't delve deeper into the characters with the two hour constraint of a movie. Maybe it's just me, though, but I usually don't mind overused tropes as long as they aren't annoying. What caught my attention more were the characters and the relationship between the characters.

First of all, WYH (the main character) is adorable and his friendship with MXY (the female lead) was adorable. The way he developed from a moody, isolated teenager to a motivated, happy young adult was so heartwarming to watch. My favorite part, though, was how his relationship with his parents developed. His parents are possibly the most hilarious, sweet, supportive parents ever, and when WYH slowly learns to appreciate and accept his parents' help, it really hit me in the heart TT. (I will say that the transition from friendship to romance between the leads was... not entirely clear, to say the least. Like of course you have the confession, which was very cute, but after that they pretty much were the same, and then suddenly they talk about a future of marriage and kids and you're like "dude what are you saying" before you realize right, they're dating)

The messages this movie carries are just what you would expect, but it's healing all the same when watching it. It captures perfectly the reason why we have to live everyday to the fullest and find things that make us happy in uncontrollable situations. The entire point of the movie, actually, is that life sucks and everyone's suffering, but you're doing a good job and you just have to make the best of it. They address the guilt the main character feels, the way cancer patients' loved ones cope, and the fact that the most optimistic people often have their dark times as well.

Make sure you have tissues, because this movie will make you BAWL. It will make you feel so many emotions and want to the hug the characters through the screen. It will make you laugh and smile and then cry a lot at the same time. It just makes you feel a lot of feelings.

ACTING (10/10)
What can I say? Jackson Yi has proved himself to be a pretty incredible actor, but I guess Better Days wouldn't have been Oscar-nominated if they had a mediocre lead actor (on that note, this movie has me running rather late to watch Better Days--once I recover from this movie, ofc). Every single line that comes out of his mouth feels natural and right and full of all the right emotions, if that makes sense. The point is, he is extremely talented, which I already knew, but you'll still be surprised by just how talented he is. The other characters as well, especially the parents (both WYH's parents and MXY's parents), are portrayed very well. You can really feel the bittersweet pain in all the characters.

MUSIC (10/10)
So there wasn't a lot of music in this movie, but it's okay because the end credit song is 100% flawlessly PERFECT. The melody and backing is perfect for the bittersweet vibe, and the lyrics are heartwrenchingly optimistic and encouraging. Do yourself a favor and listen to it (it's called 送你一朵小红花, or A Little Red Flower, by Zhao Yingjun) because it will make you cry after watching the movie, especially if you read the lyric translations. In China, you get a red flower when you're younger at school for doing a good job, so the movie (and the song) is basically about how everyone is doing a great job despite all the things life is throwing at them.

REWATCH VALUE (7.5/10)
I don't think I'd ever rewatch this movie just because I don't feel like putting myself through all that pain again, but maybe one day in the far future I will, just to watch the dynamic between him and his parents.

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