I've always had kind of a love hate relationship with Chinese historical BLs. Some are genuinely excellent, but then there are others that cram in so much plot that keeping track of all the layers of betrayal and scheming gets exhausting, and I end up checking out mentally. Part of the issue is also just how much content is out there in this space, so something really has to stand out to keep me hooked. In this case, the production value is genuinely impressive, top tier stuff, but story wise, I just couldn't bring myself to actually care about these characters. There's a ton of political scheming and backstage manipulation running throughout. Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, a hostage ends up falling for his own Prince Charming. The show runs eight episodes, each around 50 to 60 minutes long. After spending three years guarding the border, Fifth Prince Yin Qi gets called back to the capital because of a secret letter, only to end up walking straight into a deadly...
Jaume is a middle aged professor who is dying (we don’t know of what). His best friend os fellow university friend Pere, who Jaume loved all his life but is now his best friend. Here has a lovely wife and a 19 year old daughter, who has just found out that she is pregnant. The child is of David, a rebel-without-a-cause kind of college student. Pere hates David while Jaume thinks that he is one of the most brilliant students, albeit a rebel and Jaume finds himself falling in love with David. He is shocked when he finds out that David actually hustles as a male prostitute to make money. He tries to get David focuses on literature and do something with his life but David is a rebel. Professor comes up with this brilliant plan of making sure that Pere’s daughter actually keeps the child and does not abort. He even requests Pere to keep the baby because that is the only way he will have some sort of legacy left behind after he dies. The baby will have the blood of the two men the professor has loved the most, and will be his spiritual grandchild. Of course, everyone thinks that’s is the craziest idea. At the sometime when Pere’s wife spends an entire day with her daughter since they found about her pregnancy, she realises she is no longer in love with here and she needs to do something more meaningful with her own life.
The film is essentially about these 5 characters with central focus on the professor. All these individuals are racing against the clock, arguing and hurting each other. Interestingly, unlike most films, all the characters are pretty much thinking only about themselves and do not consider the effects on others. It is a dense & dark film where the characters forget that there's a fine line between wishes and making them possible with another person. Performance wise, everyone does a great job. Personally, I would have liked to see David’s character more developed. We hear a few times that his father committed suicide but beyond that we never get more details of the depth of the character. There is definitely a pain inside but what are the reason and why is he not letting professor make his life better, are still some questions that kept bothering me even after I finished watching the film.
Comments