FOREVER YOUNG: Rediscover the inner rocker

Produced by Teng Huatao, who directed hit rom-com LOVE IS NOT BLIND, and confidently directed by first-timer Lu Gengxu, a singer/music producer, FOREVER YOUNG is a joyous let\'s-form-a-rock-band period musical full of strong performances and with a crowd-pleasing finale. It\'s much more conventional than another recent feature debut by a singer - rock legend Cui Jian\'s BLUE SKY BONES - but none the worse for it, despite having a similar stucture than shuttlecocks between two periods 20 years apart. Instead of looking at the cultural and political changes in Mainland life, Lu\'s movie is simply about hitting middle age and regrets over lost chances in one\'s youth - here through the story of Ma Lu , a mild-mannered dating-agency boss (demurely played by Pan Yueming) whose memories of college life are triggered when the onetime love of his life suddenly contacts him after two decades.

The college scenes, set at fictional Beitian University, have some of the same energy and good cast chemistry as in the hit So Young , though from a more musical perspective as a group of friends set up a rock band in order to pull girls. (It\'s the 1990s, when the Hong Kong rock band Beyond and Mainland rock singer Dou Wei were kings.) After the group finally breaks up when its star performer quits, and Ma Lu still can\'t bring himself to declare his love for the pretty Li Ai, it\'s 20 years before the four friends finally rediscover their inner rocker. Once a rocker, always a rocker.

Though the character of Ma Lu (henpecked in middle age by a wife and young daughter) is the central one, he\'s overshadowed in the film by his more charismatic friend Zheng Tianliang, a born rock star, strongly played as a young man by Zhang Xiaocheng and as a middle-aged one by Eric Qin(BLIND MASSAGE). As the younger, terminally shy Ma Lu, indie actor Lü Yulai (BEIJING FLICKERS, TRAP STREET ) pairs okay with Swan as the winsome Li Ai, though it\'s her friend, played by Wang Sisi, who makes more of a screen mark. Other roles are all strongly drawn, and the cast is peppered with cameos by rock musicians like Cui, Wang Feng  and Beyond\'s Yip Sai-wing.