Promotional material for Almost Love Photo: Courtesy of Douban

Movie 'Almost Love': romance on Chinese Valentine's Day

On occasion of the Qixi Festival, also known as Chinese Valentine's Day, a new movie focusing on young romance and the pressures of high school hit theaters on Thursday.

Directed by popular Chinese novelist Luoluo and based on one of her novels, the romance movie Almost Love tells a story of a pair of typical Chinese high school students at the edge of the first crossroads in their life: gaokao, known as the college entrance exams. 

The adolescent desire to be loved gradually sprouts and develops between the pair (a city boy and a county girl) as they support each other on the eve of the college entrance exams.

The story starts as smart student Zhou Can moves to a school in a small town from a metropolis. He struggles in his new life and chooses to stay alone at the school as a silent protest against this uncomfortable lifestyle that has thrown him off balance.

At the same time, Yu Jiaoyang appears to be a wild and outgoing girl who has been having trouble with her grades. 

Though completely different, the two souls develop a very close friendship and they decide to face all obstacles together be they at school or in life.

The director of the movie is one of the most popular female novelists among the post-1980 generation in China for her writings about love, growth and regret among young people. 

In China, this genre is known as youth pain literature. Gaining extreme success in the 2000s, the genre was once criticized by many as frivolous and superficial, but many also supported it for speaking out for young students. 

Writers including Guo Jingming, Han Han and Luoluo all became hit novelists for writing about topics of concern for this group.

The genre was gradually replaced by fantasy and period web novels, but the topics it tackled such as bullying, family issues, depression among young people remain as relevant as ever. 

Before Almost Love, other similar popular novels from the 2000s were adapted into hit movies, such as Cry me a Sad River and The End of Endless Love.

Global Times