The Way We Were

The character studies are very good, convincing with depth and scope. the actors' performance is great in many ways. with 50 episodes to start, I was not sure I wanted to go there at the beginning...but this series has integrity in the story line and did leave an impact. Luo Jin in particular is surprising. I watched his performance in Royal Nirvana and then now; both series were extremely long (even by chinese standards) and I was very doubtful if I will finish them. but his performance in both was pivotal and I completed them. my feeling is that he works with good directors that he relates with and understands. He successfully conveys a lot of authentic vulnerability -almost child play that is very representative of male chinese actors, hence his success I guess. But I liked his acting because in both series he did not shy away from unveiling personal traits in order to embody very different roles. so there was a sort of reliability and rigour in his method, which draws one to the character and is very moving -a natural simplicity with little or no artifice. of course there is double attention given by the camera and the production to looks and pauses and excess of commercial appeal that does not add to the storyline; but I found that there is overall an honest attempt to present complex situations and character development over time that go beyond the simple romcom and shows aspects of a very stratified, misogynistic, coded and secretive social relationships that are informative at many levels (character, Chinese culture, story settings)