Love and Youth: The Left Ear

 

图说：The still of THE LEFT EAR.

　　China\'s continuing wave of first-love films set in a simpler past gets a fresh entry with THE LEFT EAR, a romantic drama that travels from 2005 to the present day and is largely set in the southern province of Fujian. Based on a series of novels by prolific Sichuan writer Rao Xueman, whose works are also popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the film also marks the directing debut of Alec Su, 41, a Taiwan-born actor-singer who\'s also worked a considerable amount in the Mainland from his earliest days as a TV drama star.

Working with an experienced technical crew that includes d.p. Zhao Fei (RAISE THE RED LANTERN, LET THE BULLETS FLY) and Chinese-American composer Nathan Wang (SOPHIE\'S REVENGE, NO MAN\'S LAND), Su has come up with a very smooth package, scripted by Rao herself, that strongly evokes the setting in pretty but slightly faded Dongshan island and also draws sympathetic performances from his young cast.

The central character is high-school student Li Er, 17 at the start of the film, who\'s practically deaf in her left ear - the one is is closest to the heart and traditionally seen as the only ear that counts for whispered words of love. This idea doesn\'t dominate the film but is referred to at key moments; instead, Li Er is simply the character around whom a mix of characters revolve. Her own silent crush on a handsome fellow student, Xu Yi, is also only one of the many threads in the ensemble movie.

More important dramatically is her friendship with the devil-may-care Li Bala, a high-school dropout who works as a singer in a seedy backstreet bar, and Zhang Yang, a shopkeeper\'s son who\'s self-interestedly dating a fellow student from a wealthy family. When Bala makes a direct play for Zhang Yang, he tells her she first has to publically disgrace Xu Yi, whose father "stole" his mother from him.

The characters\' shifting relationships are set against their youthful desires to get out of the provincial seaside town and make a future in the big cities of either Beijing or Shanghai. But though their paths cross at university and afterwards in those big cities, their hearts remain tied to their home town, where Li Er and Zhang Yang finally resolve their differences and where Bala meets her fate.

The complex plot packs in a lot of incident without seeming rushed, largely thanks to Su\'s deft direction, seamless editing by Hong Kong\'s Andy Chan (SO YOUNG), and the cast\'s performances. Newcomer Chen Duling, 21, who was born in nearby Xiamen, manages to make Li Er a sympathetic character despite her goodie-goodie nature; but on the female side it\'s actress Sandra Ma, 27, who dominates the film as the brazen Bala, who flouts convention and seemingly just wants to sleep her way out of town.

In many ways she is the key to the whole movie, especially in her unlikely but ultimately very moving friendship with the more fragile Le Er. As the third side of that central triangle, singer Oho Hu is suprisingly good as the conflicted Zhang Yang, especially in the film\'s second half.