I absolutely love slow-burner drama movies from China. They do this genre so well. The latest one is The Sun Rises On Us All, directed by Shangjun Cai. He also directed a pretty popular movie back in 2011 called People Mountain, People Sea. I thought I had watched that one, but upon viewing the trailer, I don’t recall that I had. It will immediately go onto my to-watch list. With this one here, we have two main characters that are in a very awkward and strained relationship. The movie explores themes related to guilt, regret, sadness, and attempts at redemption.

The premise is that the boyfriend took the blame for a driving accident for which his girlfriend was responsible. He had to serve five years in prison, but shortly afterward, the girlfriend was just too overwhelmed with the whole situation and decided to leave him to start a new relationship. They are suddenly reunited, and things get extremely awkward between the two. Zhilei Xin, playing as Meiyun, and Songwen Zhang as Baoshu did what I think is an incredible job portraying both characters. The depth of emotions that Zhilei Xin is able to exhibit on screen shows how gifted an actress she is. Songwen Zhang is also an incredible actor, and I think this movie, while it may seem simple to most, requires a range of emotions to really capture the awkward mood and roller coaster of events that happen. Both characters seem to elicit calm and patience, but underneath it all, the viewer can also tell that both are mere moments away from blowing up.

I also love how these type of Chinese movies incorporate daily life into the story. Meiyun’s struggling clothing store along with her need to put on a happy face for her streaming audiences shows just how hard making ends meet can be. The movie portrays Baoshu as extremely dejected with absolutely nothing to do each day after having got out of prison. I think it would have helped just a bit if it showed how he is also struggling on a day to day basis to make money. This is I can only presume is what the director assumes the viewers to already understand.

In a story where the two main characters are thrust into an impossible situation, the ending, while I believe I understood what the director was going for, could have been done just a bit differently in my opinion. It’s my understanding that at the very end, after having lost her baby, boyfriend, business, as well as discovering that Baoshu will not be able to forgive her before departing the train, she has reached the ultimate tipping point and decided to stab him in a bittersweet show of love? I have to assume that Baoshu will die from the stab wound to the stomach and that Meiyun will go to jail. She just can’t live with the guilt and she will do penance this time around. She admitted she was afraid the first time during the car accident to turn herself in but after having seen what her actions have done to Baoshu over the years, she just can’t go on. She likes to believe that she can look forward and that she is a survivor but ultimately, deep down, her consciousness wouldn’t allow it. The question is why did she have to take Baoshu’s life? Couldn’t she have simply stabbed him in the shoulder or other non-vital body part if she wished to be taken to jail? Baoshu was a really nice person to her, even till the very end as shown by him giving Meiyun her money back believing she was to have a kid. He was to finally move on with his life by getting away from her. In my opinion, this goes to show that while Meiyun had a conscience, her need for his forgiveness is so overpowering that in the end, she couldn’t bear to see him happy and be free of her. Basically, there’s still an evilness that lurks inside Meiyun and it goes to show that she was not that nice of a person after all. Baoshu, being who he is, unfortunately understood this all too well as shown by their embrace towards the very end, even after having been stabbed by her. Maybe to him, it’s all fate.