"So Young" (致我們終將逝去的青春)

So Young [File photo]

Veteran actress but newbie director Zhao Wei's "So Young" boosted a sense of nostalgia in the Chinese film market as well as in Chinese society. It is based on the best-selling novel of the same name, "To Our Youth that is Fading Away" by Xin Yiwu, and is also based in part on Zhao's own college experiences in the 1990s.

Her directorial debut was a commercial smash, bringing in 700 million yuan (US$115 million) at the box office. The first 90 minutes of the film, set on a 1990s college campus, tell a story which is redolent of the era, full of love, friendship, ambition and broken dreams. Yet the bloated, soapy final 40 minutes become a distraction from Zhao’s careful character construction earlier on, which turns melodramatic and wild uneven in tone.

On another note, two more movies are also quite good in this nostalgia wave initiated in 2013 by Zhao Wei: "American Dreams in China," directed by Peter Chan, and "Young Style" by Liu Jie.