Cry me a sad river (Film Review)

                           FILM REVIEW 

                 Ni Liu Cheng He / 逆流成河

                    (Cry me a sad river) 

DETAILS: 

Release date: October 05, 2018.

Language: Mandarin.

Country of origin: China. 

Box office: $51,400,614. 

Cast:

Ren Min as Yi Yao (lead role).

Xin Yun Lai as Gu Sun Xi (lead role). 

Zhao ying Bo as Qi ming (lead role).

Zhu Dan ni as Xiao Mi (lead role).  

Zhang Ruo Nan as Sun Xiang (supporting role).

PLOT / REVIEW:

Cry me a sad river is a novel based chinese movie directed and produced by Luo Luo and Younghuan sun. 

The main role of the movie is yi yao who was the victim of bullying besides yi yao, sunxi, Qi ming Xiaomi nd Sun Xiang (sunxi’s sister) plays important role in the movie.The movie highlighted the important issues of bullying and suicide. The Story tells that Bullying will result in a bad effect if not prevented immediately and will cause the bullied to think that life is too unfair. 

Spoiler Alert: 

Yi yao is a high school student who lived with her mother through some flashbacks. We can see her father passed away a long time ago and now they’ve each other. Yi yao’s friend Qi ming who’s also her neighbour lives across the street and his mother doesn't like yi yao's family and looked down on them, but it seems like Qi ming likes Yi Yao, Xiaomi who’s a transfer student in yi yao’s school was a victim of bullying in her former school, later in the movie she bullied yi yao to death. Xiaomi and her friends used different tactics like beating, throwing her to the ground, throwing water on her, locking her in the bathroom, spreading false rumours and at last successfully telling everyone that she killed Sun Xiang and she’s a murderer. Sun Xi and Qi ming didn’t believe her and everyone suspected her as a murderer, Not having anyone by her side she committed suicide by jumping into the river next to their school. She was saved by Sun Xi,at last her mother moved out from the former neighbourhood to a new one, Sun xi changed his school and introduced himself as “the sun that rises from the west” (that’s also meaning of his name) and Xiaomi was charged with the muder of Sun Xiang. Later, the school has an assembly to remind their students about bullying. Their teacher wrote a letter about it to the government and the school received wide media coverage. We later see Yi Yao all by herself having her monologue at the lake where Sunxi mistook her committing suicide, on how to embrace grief and not to give up on life regardless of what happened. She saw a flashback of herself and Sunxi after the suicide incident, sitting next to each other by the lake. Sunxi said that Yi Yao should depend on him and then translated his 'Sunxi' name as 'the sun that rises from the west' or in another word Yi Yao's hope.Out of the flashback, Yi Yao sat by the lake and looked at the spot where Sunxi used to sit, when later she saw Sunxi looking at her from a distance and then smiled at him.

The story was basically "nothing new", but the acting and the way they portrayed the characters in such a short time, made the movie fantastic. No long time wasted on unnecessary dialogues, because mostly the facial expressions speak for them. It doesn't feel overdramatized. The whole production, the story and the cinematography is well done, but if only they made the movie a bit longer, there was a point where I thought Yi Yao was just imagining things because what they have shown are only flashbacks and tidbits of some of the more important scenes especially, the bullying part. Only if they didn't rush things, it could probably be even better. They could make it a 2+hour movie instead of 1hr & 40 min runtime like to show the bullying scenes not just flashes. but still it has a decent ending. The cast of “cry me a sad river” is new, it's their first movie but the cast did a fantastic job in portraying the characters, especially Ren Mi (Yi Yao). Yi yao’s was so great that we can see her feelings every time she’s shown on screen. The Music is so touching that it shows up at the right time and at the right moment in the scenes that will make you sad while watching it. 

The movie really showed the harmful consequences of bullying and the mindset of those bullies who think that what they did was "just a joke" or looking back as adults, they just "forgot" what happened. The scene where Yi Yao yells at her classmates from the seaside, telling them she knows her murderers,(“Did you kill someone? Today, you are all killers") left such an impact. 

The original novel's ending is a bit tragic one, instead of the bittersweet ending that we get in this film. It’s good that the production didn't follow the original ending because the audience needs to learn one thing about this story, which is to keep surviving bullying or anything bad that happened in your life, and that there will always be at least someone by your side for you to depend on like Yi Yao had SunXi with her. I also hope the bullies out there watch this film and at least feel a little regret on what they have done to their victims, or how big of an impact it is to be bullied.