How Long Will I Love U Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

How Long Will I Love U Blu-ray Movie Review

Time and again.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 2, 2019

Well Go USA has made something of a name for itself with its releases of Asian cinema fare, offerings that are frequently typically either historical epics like Shadow, fantasy epics like Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds, or martial arts epics like the Ip Man Trilogy. Occasional outliers have cropped up, like The Island, T-34 and/or Big Brother (even though some aspects of at least one of those three aforementioned genres probably applies in part to them as well), but How Long Will I Love U? is one of the first science fiction romantic comedies Well Go USA has released, if for no other reason that there aren’t that many science fiction romantic comedies being released by anyone. Imagine the old Doris Day - Rock Hudson enterprise Pillow Talk with a time traveling conceit included and you may have some idea of the rather peculiar ambience of How Long Will I Love U.

How Long Will I Love U plays its temporal cards pretty close to its vest for the first little while, only alluding to the fact that two stories are unfolding in different timeframes. Gu Xiaojiao (Tong Liya) is a young woman on the hunt for a Sugar Daddy, or at least a husband who will buy her the home of her dreams. Despite some setbacks, she does in fact manage to find a kind of nerdy guy on the hunt for a replacement for his dead wife, something that doesn’t exactly set Gu’s heart on fire, even if she’s shown to have mendacious qualities, something that ends up backfiring on her. Lu Ming (Jia Yin Lei) is a down on his luck architect who tries pitching a new housing development to an entrepreneur, only to have his plans pooh-poohed. Lu (like Gu) is obviously in some financial distress, and it looks like the walls are closing in him (which they literally will soon, stay tuned). Both characters return to their apartments after stress filled days, only to have even more go wrong, leaving them both distraught as they go to bed.

It’s at this point that the film almost seems to be verging on Dark City territory, with walls shifting, items merging into each other and all sorts of structural hell breaking loose. Some fun split screen effects add to the weirdness of it all, until finally the viewer is confronted with a split screen showing Gu and Lu finally asleep in their beds. Except — they’re asleep in the same bed. For reasons which are initially unexplained (and which frankly could have used more explanation even when they are supposedly explained), two timelines have folded into each other. Lu is alive in 1999 and Gu is alive in 2018, and they inhabit the same apartment basically two decades apart. Except — they inhabit one apartment now. It’s completely outré, aided by a crazy quilt production design that sees elements of both characters’ apartments grafted on to each other.

It’s here that the film starts plying a more “traditional” rom-com ambience, with two mismatched (in more ways than one) people obviously hurtling toward true love. There are a number of interstitial elements that accrue, including some probably needless melodrama involving both characters, something that seems especially curious and arguably unhelpful given the overall whimsical nature of the film. But How Long Will I Love U ultimately manages to create some rather interesting riffs on the whole time travel subgenre, with one of the two main characters’ 2018 selves becoming more desperate to bend the timeline for personal reasons.

This is one of those “high concept” films that probably could have done without any attempt at explaining the “mechanics” of things, so that some high tech mumbo jumbo that suddenly starts popping up may strike some as positively superfluous. There is also one plot point or at least an image tied to a concept that seems positively ripped from Inception. That said, despite a perhaps over reliance on at least ostensible “science” over pure imaginative “fiction”, How Long Will I Love U builds to a rather powerful emotional conclusion, though at least one, and arguably two (if you count snippets in the closing credits crawl) codas undercut that emotion. The film is never less than involving, but it’s almost as if writer and director Su Lun simply didn’t trust the film to be truly heartfelt.

How Long Will I Love U Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

How Long Will I Love U is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists the Arri Alexa XT as the camera and a 2K DI in its technical specifications for this film. This is a commendably sharp and well detailed presentation, though the film does employ several stylistic artifices which intentionally tweak imagery and which can result in a lack of fine detail. In "normal" moments (normal being a decidedly relative term in a film like this), the palette looks natural and very well suffused, and fine detail levels are typically high, especially in close-ups. Some of the grading is quite effective, as in the yellowish tint that accompanies the introductory sequences featuring Lu. More traditionally "thriller-esque" blue grading is similarly effective, but arguably doesn't support fine detail levels quite as thoroughly. There are a few desaturated or black and white moments which offer good contrast and detail levels, though ironically some of the color material looked somewhat variant in the contrast department to me. I noticed no significant compression issues.

How Long Will I Love U Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

How Long Will I Love U features a nicely rendered DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in Mandarin. The film exploits good surround activity in (literal) set pieces like the big "squishing" of what may be initially assumed to be the separate apartments of Gu and Lu. Some outdoor material also offers good background clatter in the surrounds courtesy of a busy urban environment. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout, and a rather Danny Elfman-esque score by Fei Peng also resides nicely in the surround channels.

How Long Will I Love U Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:24)

As is typically the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the above supplement has been authored to move on automatically to trailers for other Well Go USA releases. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

How Long Will I Love U Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are times when How Long Will I Love U kind of comes off as an elaborate pilot for a sitcom (and kind of hilariously in doing background research for this review, it appears there may well be a Chinese sitcom with a surprisingly similar premise). At other times, this film seems to want to go for the melodramatic jugular, something that is tonally at least a little at odds with more playful aspects. The film benefits from two really winning performances by Liya Tong and Jia Yin Lei, and some elements of the production design, notably the "combo" apartment, are extremely effective. Technical merits are solid, and at least for those on the hunt for a science fiction romantic comedy (and you know who you are), How Long Will I Love U comes Recommended.