Close to Love (2022)

mildly disappointed, but did enjoy

I went into this movie knowing absolutely nothing about it and to be honest, it was very lovely and simple- if only the writing had been as good as the overall set up was.

The first half of the movie was brilliant- childhood friends, a dubious friendship-toeing the line of romance and a less conventional ending when the female lead marries someone else- all established to the audience within the first fifty minutes or so. The humour slapped, I loved the characters and their dynamic, but after the first hour everything goes very quickly downhill.

I feel that although that at the end of the movie the overall message was "we experienced good times and that all that matters" it wasn't really developed upon and carried through the movie. I felt a huge disconnect with the characters on screen, especially Xu Yi and Gao Xiaonan, the movie very rarely disclosed any of their thoughts and I honestly felt that there was very little growth in the characters. Xu Yi mainly just narrated what had happened during the years as opposed to really reflecting on what he felt or understood from those moments. Like him settling for Xiao Yuan, or his move from entertainment news to documentary- which clearly had a huge impact on his identity and his self worth.

This problem of lacking a main central message also carried through to the way Xu Yi and Xiaonan's relationship developed. I feel like the movie could have been better if you could see a clear progression their friendship develop and grow until it tipped onto the edge of romance followed by a big blow up where everything ends. Instead, a romantic relationship between the male and female lead was consistently implied from the outset to the end, which to me, further muddied the arc.

However my biggest ick of the movie was the scene where Xu Yi and Xiaonan have their second big disagreement when Xu Yi walks in on Xiaonan and her ex boyfriend. The scene to me felt like should have been the climax of the movie, but because this cycle of almost being together as friends or more or anything and then splitting apart and being too scared to say anything about their emotions had happened literally so many times it just didn't feel significant at all. It just felt like another tangle in the knot of plot-points. Furthermore, the fact that this blow-up (like many of the other unfortunate events in this movie) was caused by a misunderstanding is just utterly bewildering to me. Xu Yi's behaviour here was also so out of character, up until now he seemed to be very open with his emotions and his avoidant behaviour made no sense to me- it honestly just felt like a piece of lazy writing- the only reason why this argument even occurred was simply because the people writing it decided it would.

In short, the movie was a lovely and fun watch but ultimately I was left wanting more substance. The ending to me was very abrupt and underdeveloped- Xu Yi's acceptance of Xiaonan marrying someone else was hardly explored. I also wish the overall plot was a little more streamlined and we were given in depth insight into the development of the character's thoughts and feelings- such as more reflective voice-overs from Xu Yi, who despite being presented as the main character from the start felt as alien as the more major side characters. Maybe more time spent on exploring the characters and less on repetitive plot points would have done the movie some good.

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