BY CLEO LI-SCHWARTZ
This review is part of a series of reflections on Chinese films presented by the 2025 Beijing International Film Festival.
Strangers When We Meet (朝云暮雨), first released in 2024, is a curious film. At first glance, its plot summary could well describe either a romantic comedy or a melodramatic tearjerker: Qin, a two-time convict, is released from prison and resolves to marry and start a family. He wants to make a new man of himself and finally become a good citizen. Then he meets a young woman who’s also just been released from prison, and all hell breaks loose.
In the hands of director Zhang Guoli, previously a xiangsheng comic actor, the film that follows veers between the two genre possibilities, blending absurdist comedy and violent tragedy. While the film skews towards the melodramatic, its lead actor Fan Wei, much like the director, has a background in comedy – and it shows. His expressions, by turns quizzical and resigned, elicit laughs, but also deep sympathy. Fan delivers a moving portrayal of a man who’s spent 27 years in prison and just wants to live out the rest of life on the straight and narrow.
In each of his respective prison stints, one of Qin’s parents died. His attempts to honor them after death by visiting the site of their former graves, which have now been flooded by a reservoir, form a poignant backdrop to the film’s events. Crucially, Qin has become rich from a compensation fund paid out after the destruction of his parents’ home and graves; in a moment of subtle social critique, the village head flippantly tosses a portion of the payout in cash into Qin’s lap.
It is due to this bittersweet windfall that he attracts the romantic/pecuniary interest of Chang Juan, a young woman recently released from prison herself. Played by Dongyu Zhou, best known for her appearance in Zhang Yimou’s 2010 Under the Hawthorn Tree, Qin’s female counterpart presents a more complicated case. Zhou is a phenomenal actress, particularly in this role, that of a fragile yet violent young woman whose motivations constantly leave us guessing. As she persuades Qin (or “old man”, “老头“), as she insists on calling him, to take her on in a trial marriage, then a real one, we can tell that she’s manipulating him.
Yet there’s also a darker edge to the expressions that flit across her face, one that goes beyond that of a mere manipulative, heartless gold digger. Its source is dramatically revealed towards the film’s end. Thus Zhou has three levels of performance to pull off: that of the playful but temperamental young woman sweet-talking old Qin, that of the manipulative ex-con out for money, and the display of the darker trauma that drives her motivations. This she does masterfully in an uncanny yet riveting performance.
The problem with her character is one that unfortunately mars many a Chinese male director’s depiction of women: ultimately, it exists only to further the male hero’s character development and self-discovery (as in Lu Zhang’s The Shadowless Tower). This becomes cruelly apparent especially in the film’s final segment, in which Chang Juan is reduced to a vegetative state after a suicide attempt. This plot choice becomes an opportunity for Qin to showcase his selflessness and dedication. Rather than being allowed to finish her story herself, Qin gets to assume it as his own narrative of redemption.
The film’s other weak point is its soundtrack: the most cliched piano music imaginable primes the viewer to feel moved – sometimes at odd moments, when Qin has clearly just been emotionally manipulated. A film that makes excellent use of driving rain and subtle facial expressions to elicit emotions and set the mood could have done without such an obvious musical backdrop. Its moments of obvious humor set to chirpy music also jar at times, especially interspersed as they are with drama and, in one shocking scene, brutal violence.
Yet there remains something deeply touching about Fan Wei’s performance, and the central relationship of the film. At one point, he relates a recurring dream he has to Chang Juan: he’s back in prison cleaning the kitchens, as he did for so many years. Then he suddenly realises that all the other inmates are gone; it’s just him, all alone, back in detention. Well, but that’s easy to understand, Chang Juan replies. You fear going back to prison, of course – but you also miss it.
In fact, the film opens with Qin cleaning that very prison kitchen, a routine and ritual he clearly enjoys. On the outside, despite his new-found financial security, he once again starts cleaning kitchens, some of the most purely joyful moments of the film. It is this focus on the process and possibility of rebuilding a fulfilling life after half a lifetime behind bars that is the film’s most compelling element. One wishes that Chang Juan’s own post-incarceration trajectory, whether happy or tragic, had been handled with more grace and agency.
About the author
Cleo Li-Schwartz is an editor, writer, and MPhil student in Chinese Literature at the University of Cambridge. She was previously Associate Editor at The Washington Quarterly and China Reporting Assistant at Grid News.