In spite of the subject of illness, Han Yan, director and scriptwriter of A Little Red Flower, says that his new film is intended as a spiritual guide and therapeutic support for the audience.

“I don’t want to portray how much pain [people] are in after they fall ill or how they toss and turn in bed, unable to fall asleep. If the audience wants to see such things, they can just pay a visit to the hospital. Movies, indeed all works of art, should be able to give viewers psychological consolation,” he says.

Han recalls how he was touched by the spiritual power of his previous film, Go Away Mr. Tumor (2015), an adaptation of autobiographical comics by the late illustrator Xiong Dun, who faced life with much optimism and humour in spite of her 2011 diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“Once I had dinner with friends, and a classmate of one of the friends came over to talk to me. Expressing his gratitude, he told me how Go Away Mr. Tumor had helped him ride out the most difficult stage in his life. In many cases of filmmaking, [the directors] are showcasing their world views. For people who need some direction in life, they might have some reaction after watching [these movies].”

By showing the steely determination of cancer patients and their families in facing one of life’s biggest adversities, Han hopes viewers who have comparatively little to complain about can realise that they should stop grumbling and be grateful for being alive.

“I have watched many movies about the pursuit of dreams, but as I got older I felt the most difficult thing [in the world] is to stay alive,” he says. “Every day, I see people exhausting all means just to stay alive. [Battling severe illnesses] is just an extreme version of staying alive.”

Han regards A Little Red Flower as the second film in what he calls his “Life Trilogy”. While Go Away Mr. Tumor focused on Xiong’s fight against cancer, he says his new film explores how families and others in patients’ orbit face the cancer crisis.

“Like Wei Yihang [the character played by Jackson Yee], people with illnesses sometimes think the world is very unfair to them and they are very unfortunate. Wei severely lacks motivation at the beginning … he thinks he cannot do the things he enjoys like ordinary youths. His parents are very positive, but Wei thinks they are just feigning this positivity in front of him.

“Wei never considers the predicament his parents are in. They cannot show their sadness in front of him while having to shoulder more responsibility. They also have to observe vigilantly his every word and emotion so as to give him enough spiritual support. There’s a truism that when there’s a patient in the family, the people facing the most challenges are not the patients themselves, but their families.”

Twenty-year-old Yee has been praised by critics and audiences alike for his realistic portrayal of a cynical and reclusive patient who later transforms into a compassionate person who accompanies his girlfriend (played by Liu Haocun), who also has cancer, on the last stage of her life journey.

It was the second time Yee, a member of hit boy band TFBoys, has played the male lead in a movie. His first performance as a lead actor in Better Days saw him nominated for best actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Rooster Awards in mainland China. He won the best newcomer award for Better Days on both occasions.

With Better Days raking in 1.6 billion yuan at the box office, film industry analysts predict that A Little Red Flower’s eventual box office takings will be 1.4 billion yuan, catapulting Yee’s status to that of one of the most bankable male stars in China.

“Yee was 19 years old when making the movie [a year ago], having studied for two years at the Central Academy of Drama [in Beijing],” Han says. “He was able to put the many skills in constructing a character he learned at school to use when making the movie.”

Many of the scenes portrayed in the story are inspired by real-life events that Han witnessed himself. One scene portrays how Wei Yihang orders a takeaway meal for a stranger who is walking in a daze on the street after losing his daughter to cancer. Han says he wrote the scene based on an incident he witnessed at the entrance of the Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing.

“My wife had to see the doctor that day. I was milling about at the entrance. I saw a man come out of the hospital laden with a heavy bag. No one paid attention to him. A security guard callously urged him to go on his way. The man just sat on the kerbside, expressionless.

“I thought, what is the story behind this man? Suddenly, a takeaway delivery worker gave him a box of rice. The man walked around, trying to figure out who ordered the takeaway for him. I think the most likely benefactor was the delivery worker himself.”

Such gestures of kindness are what the flower in the film title symbolises, Han adds. “The little red flower is the kindness, the lubricant that smoothens interpersonal relationships. I have long been thinking about how the world should be run. The giving of the little red flower can be a way of how it should be run.

“The world can be a place where people believe there’s always someone out there [looking out for] them, even though they can be strangers. Then people will start to learn how to love people around them. I believe the world should be run like that.”

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