(dir. Lun Su, 2018)

Presented by Sheng-mei Ma

A rom com “with Chinese characteristics,” Su Lun’s How Long Will I Love U (超时空同居Chaoshikong tongju 2018) deploys the millennial rage of chuanyuewen (穿越文literature of temporal and spatial crossing) in Chinese web novels, films, and TV series. The original Chinese title means “Cohabitating Across Time and Space” and encapsulates the crossover chic, while evoking the 2009 TV series Dwelling Narrowness (蝸居 woju, literally, “Snail/Paltry Shelter”). Su’s film follows a thirty-something shengnü (leftover, i.e., unmarried, woman) Gu Xiaojiao, who tries desperately to marry rich in 2018, only to find her apartment merged one night with that of a failed engineer Lu Ming who happened to have rented the same apartment in 1999. The two losers-lovers and the two Chinas nearly two decades apart fuse into one, for a short while, to diagnose the twenty-first century Social Darwinism whereby Lu (and the PRC itself?) could only become a billionaire by abetting a murder and, subconsciously, killing his (its?) younger innocent self.