Director Xu Jinglei swaps styles in her new movie
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Xu Jinglei |
With beautiful faces, fashionable costumes and an intriguing portrayal of office politics, female director Xu Jinglei's upcoming movie Go Lala Go! is likely to be irresistible to young audiences.
"In recent years, I have become a big fan of Gossip Girls, Sex and City and Lipstick Jungle … I think these works are beautiful and amusing. If I make another movie, I will make something as pretty as that," the 36-year-old director told Beijing Daily Messenger newspaper in April.
This is exactly what she has done with Go Lala Go! (Du Lala sheng zhi ji), her fourth feature, set for nationwide release on April 15. Sex and City's costume designer Patricia Field has been invited to make sure the clothes are up to the minute. In addition to Xu, who plays the heroine Du Lala, the movie gathers heartthrobs like Taiwan model Pace Wu, Hong Kong singer-actress Karen Mok and Taiwan singer-actor Stanley Huang. Preview reports describe the movie as like a fashion show and easy on the eye.
The movie, adapted from Li Ke's bestseller of the same name, tells how the heroine, Du Lala manages to get promoted to HR manager of a foreign firm. But Xu says the movie is about a young woman's growth in society. The movie is the director's first attempt at commercial production. At over 30 million yuan (US$4.4 million), it was Xu's biggest budget production. The film was shot in Beijing, Shanghai and some foreign cities. Xu believes that her new work will be a hit and may pull in as much as 100 million yuan (US$15 million) in ticket sales.
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A poster of "Go Lala Go!" |
In 2002 Xu Jinglei made her directorial debut with a small-budget movie My Father and I (Wo he ba ba) that she also penned and starred in. The movie established her as an art house director.
Two years later, adopting Austrian writer Stefan Zweig's novella, she directed and acted with powerhouse Jiang Wen in the movie Letter from an Unknown Woman (Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin). The movie won her the Silver Seashell award at the 2004 San Sebastián International Film Festival.
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A poster of "Letter from an Unknown Woman" |
In 2006, she teamed up with writer Wang Shuo to make her third movie Dreams May Come (Meng xiang zhao jin xian shi). The movie cost only 6 million yuan (US$879,000) to produce and features a debate between an actress (played by Xu) and a director (played by Han Tongsheng).
Before she became a director, Xu won fame as a TV actress in the 1990s. Indeed she was an idol for the young people on Chinese mainland. She debuted in her first movie Tough Guy (Hu ran zhang fu) in 1996. She later appeared in popular productions such as Spicy Love Soup (Aiqing mala tang, 1997), The Storm Riders (Fung wan: Hung ba tin ha, 1997), Spring Subway (Kaiwang chuntian de ditie, 2002), Confession of Pain (Seung sing, 2006) and The Warlords (Tau ming chong, 2007).
In addition to her movies, Xu's blog is another factor in her gaining vast popularity in China. Since she launched the blog on web portal Sina in 2006, it has been visited more than 270 million times. According to Technorati, her blog has the most incoming links of any blog in any language on the Internet. She is undoubtedly the most popular blogger in China.
In 2008, she launched an online magazine Kaila which has also been eagerly embraced by the public.
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