Film Challenge Week 19: A Chinese Film

Film: Soul Mate (2016)

Genre: Romance/Drama

Watched on: Kanopy

One of my favorite classes in university was Contemporary Chinese Cinema, where we watched a film from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese Diaspora every week.

We were introduced to the works of Jia Zhangke, Zhang Yimou, Li Yu, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, and everyone's beloved Wong Kar-Wai. It was such a treat to walk into class knowing we would watch a curated film for the day and discuss our thoughts. Each film exposed me to a new world or perspective. It's a feeling I've been craving lately since leaving formal education behind.

This challenge is one way I'm trying to recapture that feeling I had. For this week's prompt, I chose a contemporary Chinese film by a director I had never seen before.

Soul Mate is adapted from a book of the same name written by Anni Baobei, whose life is paralleled by one of the main characters of this film. My main suggestion before watching this film is to avoid having any expectations based on the posters or the thumbnails on streaming platforms. Every image I've seen is extremely misleading, which is reflected in the Letterboxd reviews, with many misinterpreting it as a queer film. Understandably so, as the thumbnail on Kanopy showed two women removing their tops in front of one another.

This film centers around the friendship between Li Ansheng and Lin Qiyue. After meeting in primary school, they were fast friends and became inseparable. As life goes, romantic relationships, work, familial circumstances, and tough personal choices cause the ebb and flow of their friendship.

We are first introduced to Li Ansheng in her 30s, whose boss asks her to reach out to an old friend about a popular online novel titled Qiyue and Ansheng that chronicles her entire friendship with Qiyue. Coincidentally, she bumps into an old acquaintance, sparking further memories of her friendship. After that encounter, we transition into the history of Qiyue and Ansheng's relationship, where a deep secret soon comes to light.

This is the type of film where you have to trust the journey. It is best to go into it with very little to no prior knowledge for maximum enjoyment.

I found this to be an intricate portrayal of friendship and platonic love. My friends are some of the most important relationships in my life, because we choose to show up for each other and be there for one another, even though nothing binds us together except the desire to be in each other's lives. It's a choice that I do not view lightly. The vulnerability, softness, and intimacy of female friendships are building blocks for the foundation of my life. I don't know who I would be or where I would be if it weren't for my friends who have loved and supported me endlessly.

Soul Mate captures these feelings so succinctly, even though the characters make some questionable choices, which adds to the realism. I'm sure we've all made one too many questionable choices in life, and yet our friends are still there to hold us when we fall. That's how you know they are keepers.

I noticed there's a Korean adaptation of this film released in 2023, so you know it's a good watch. I gave Soul Mate 4 stars.