Love You 10,000 Years – Another attempt by Vic Chou at being a “real” actor, or what I wish he’d say to me every night. [Switching off fangirl.] This movie follows his well-received performance in the television series Black and White (痞子英雄) in which he played against type as a roguish police officer. He continues to veer from his sweet ‘n’ sensitive image, here by looking like a dirty, crumpled piece of paper.
Chou doesn’t shed the boy band persona completely though; he plays Qifeng, a rock musician with the Electro Monkey Boys who also has serious commitment issues. None of his relationships lasts more than three months, and after each breakup, he goes back to bumming around with his mates.
Meanwhile in Japan, Sakurada (Kato) has two job offers. She is hired by way of a marriage proposal to be the wife of her longterm boyfriend; she sensibly declines. A company gives her a more reasonable position, which she accepts, but she must spend three months in Taiwan to brush up her Chinese. Sakurada jumps at the opportunity to explore a new place and to escape her parents.
Things get off to a perfect rom-com start, which is to say they begin miserably. She gets drunk on her first night, crashes Qifeng’s show, and then smashes his guitar. Her second night is just as unlucky when the two end up on a bus driven by a vengeful henpecked husband. He leaves them stranded in the middle of nowhere, a very good place to begin a romantic relationship, or a murder spree.
It’s the former, and soon, Qifeng and Sakurada decide to try out a tidy three month affair. They draw up a contract outlining the terms of their romance, including a clause that stipulates a fine for prematurely ending the relationship. Living together proves to be more difficult than they anticipate, however; Sakurada berates Qifeng for his lack of good housekeeping skills while he cannot tolerate her nagging.
Neither the script nor the direction takes full advantage of Chou and Kato’s endearing chemistry, and their characters’ feelings for each other vacillate from hot to cold. Individual moments between the two come across genuinely but the relationship as a whole doesn’t reveal itself as naturally as it could have. The movie is also hurt by a protracted ending that keeps the leads apart for fifteen minutes too long.
Nevertheless, Love You 10,000 Years is a fun film that utilizes many tools in its genre. It’s spiced with musical interludes and punchy cartoons, and the movie is especially buoyed by the charm of its supporting cast. Na Dou steals a few scenes as a cross-dressing landlord while Moon Wang, of Meteor Garden fame, takes an amusing turn as a Chinese language teacher. Sakurada’s foreign adventures will also be familiar to those who have worked or studied abroad in Asia, except for that falling in love with Vic Chou bit.
“Love You 10,000 Years” by Vic Chou
“I Fell Asleep Thinking of You” by Vic Chou
Released: 2010
Prod: Peggy Chiao 焦雄屏
Dir: Toyoharu Kitamura 北村豊晴
Writer: Jian Shi-Geng 簡士耕
Cast: Vic Chou 周渝民; Kato Youki 加藤侑紀; Moon Wang 王月; Mimura Takayo 三村恭代; Na Dou 納豆; Huang Teng-Hui 黃鐙輝; Li Bo-En 李伯恩; Hao Lei 郝蕾
Time: 108 min
Lang: Mandarin, Japanese
Country: Taiwan
Reviewed: 2013
Fits of Fury 
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