Review | Somewhere Winter film review: Ma Sichun, Wallace Huo in nostalgia-fuelled romance
- Based on a Rao Wueman novel, film charts the relationship between a mother and her daughter, and the parallels between their own youthful relationships with men
- The film follows the recent trend in China for nostalgic teen romances set in the 1990s
3/5 stars
Taking its Chinese film title from Chyi Chin’s hit Taiwanese pop song from 1987, Somewhere Winter charts the faltering relationship between a Beijing university student and a Taiwanese photographer across three decades.
Written directly for the screen by celebrated novelist Rao Xueman, the film continues the recent trend for nostalgic romances about adolescents set in the 1990s. Rao and director Wang Weiming contrast this potential coupling with the frayed relationship between a mother and her daughter, challenging the audience to decide whether family should be prioritised ahead of our more selfish romantic yearnings.
When the film opens, the bond between former TV host An Ran (Ma Sichun), and her estranged daughter Nian (Vicky Chen Wen-chi) is further tested when she drags Nian away from her studies in Los Angeles to tend to her bedridden grandfather in Beijing. Nian resents her mother for demanding that family must come first, but as she is sorting through decades of paraphernalia in her grandfather’s home, she learns more about her mother’s past.
In 1991, An, then an excitable young student of Nian’s age, meets the charismatic Qi Xiao (Wallace Huo Chien-hwa), an older Taiwanese photographer, who gives her a ticket to a Chyi Chin concert. Over the years that follow, their lives become increasingly entwined, but romance remains perpetually elusive as he frequently returns to Taiwan, where his pushy ex-lover Ye Yuchen (Patty Hou Pei-chen) is angling for a reconciliation.