Love on that day (2012)

Country: China, Thai
Format: movie
Genre: romance, youth
Cast: Mario Maurer, Philip Lau, Ye Qing, Kan Qingzi, Gong Hanlin, Jin Zhu
Synopsis: In a small harbor city is a inn called "Heart time inn" where lovers can write love letters to each other and bail them out when they return to the inn years later. A young handsome boxer Martin  from Thailand checks in one day. He starts to get along with Xiao Ya, owners niece, and her friends. The past and present make hearts beat faster in "Heart time inn".
Rating: 2/5
This is Mario Maurer's Chinese debut movie and as you might guess he was the reason why I wanted to see it - Mario Maurer + love story =high expectations due to "First Love", but it seems that nothing can give me the same feeling. "Love on that day" is full of cliche, predictable and just another youngsters' love story.

Even though Martin goes there actually for a boxing training, yet boxing is not everything for him. It is more just a thing that he is really good at. I respect Martin for making very bold decisions. Thai sweetheart Mario Maurer is as brave as Martin - taking up a movie in another country when he actually is not fluent in Chinese. His acting was as great as it can be with a script like it has, but comparing his boxing scenes to "Ashita no Joe" scenes then, please forgive me, they could have hired a boxing trainer. I know these movies are incomparable, but when the same kick does not look great then what can I do.

Xiao Ya is the cute girl at Heart Time Inn. She has lost her parents and started her life with a new white page at her aunt's and her husband's place. Just as her friend's prediction is - first love will hit fierce and fast. She falls in love with Martin extremely fast and for the first time I cannot say exactly in how long time everything happens. There is no way to tell, because they only talk about past in time and how long one thing took in the end. 

An important side line is Xiao Ya's friendship with Ah Lun and Tang Guo. They have been friends since Xiao Ya started to live with her aunt and uncle, which was 2 years before the movie sets off. As you might predict then Ah Lun as the man who has known Xiao Ya longer than Martin, sees Xiao Ya's eye-candy more like an eyesore. He is blindingly in love with the girl and he is rather delusional to be so sure that they have mutual feelings for each other. At the same time, he misses the sweet ( actually more like sarcastic and abusive) looks from Tang Guo eyes.Fortunately their love-square is peaceful and does not cause much drama to each other.

The whole story sets off with Martin searching for his father, but the only thing he has is a ticket to bail out his mother's love letter from Mr. Robinson. This line will lead into rather funny situations and will bring everybody together. Father's story is only thing that cannot be expected before, but the way they end it ruins everything they developed that far - it is rushed, naive and stupid. I hoped that there would be some logic in it, but no - they were not able to give me that.

From all subjects they handle in this movie, I enjoyed the most "dreams/career vs love", because they gave me different actions. If one is willing to miss once in a life time opportunity to be with the loved one, then other is saying "Now hold on - I am going to do my things first and then if you are willing to wait for me, then let's see about it!". Okey, it was not exactly like that, but I think it is original, maybe the most original thing from this movie of all. I admit that I am on the side "First dreams, then love" so I was extremely happy they did it this way. I found it weird that they do not talk about cultural differences at all.

We have here Chinese, Thai people and American; the story takes place in China and a some scenes in Thai - but there are no differences. It is like a happy world where everyone can understand each other and does not find some things off. How many of you can say that they went to foreign country and did not experience even one discomfort due to cultural differences? I have been to several countries in Europe and there is always something very different from my country - so don't tell that Thai and China have that similar cultures, because you would turn my world around.

In the end as I mentioned before it is a sickly sweet youngsters "love" movie which is full of long beauty-scenes. Maybe I did not have the right mood to watch it then but I felt that it was missing something really important. In the middle of the movie I was rather bored and thought of sleeping, then the end got a bit interesting again. So if you have a mood for cliche with little sense then go ahead and enjoy.