Blossoms Under Somewhere 寄了一整個春天 Review: Riley Yip’s Erratic But Well-Acted Coming-of-Age Dramedy Features Collar’s Marf Yau’s Breakthrough Performance

There are Blossoms Under Somewhere for first-time director Riley Yip (Yuk-Ying), whose previous screenwriting credit was the late Liu Kai-Chi-starred Weeds on Fire but subsequently left the film industry to pursue a pilot’s license. Then, fate intervened that encouraged Yip to participate for the First Feature Film Initiative (FFFI) programme, resulting in winning a grant of HK$5 million from the Hong Kong Film Development Council. It would take years for Yip alongside co-writer Sze Ling-Ling to tailor their script, but thanks to the active involvement of Fruit Chan, who served as the producer, the movie eventually bloomed into fruition.

Like Weeds on Fire, Yip continues to explore the coming-of-age storytelling angle and this time, it’s a pair of two best friends, Ching Hui (Marf Yau) and Rachel Ho (Sheena Chan). who both attend the all-girls secondary school St. Lina. Whereas Ching is socially awkward due to her stuttering problem, Rachel is more rebellious in nature. They earn extra cash selling their used or secondhand panties online, which attracts lots of perverts willing to pay good money.

Their online business takes off — no puns intended — even though, from Ching’s side, she does face some setbacks along the way, with Fruit Chan himself showing up in a hilarious cameo as one of the pervs. At one point, Ching has to meet her customer face-to-face, leading to an embarrassing, yet hilarious encounter.

Yip focuses primarily on Ching’s arc and how the stutter has hindered her from having conversations with others, making new friends or finding a boyfriend. At school and even during her leisure time, Rachel is her only friend she communicates with the most. She does manage to get acquainted with a young man working as a delivery boy named Ben (Shin Cheung, in a solid supporting role), who regularly shows up at her front door to pick up her parcels.

Ching is pretty much a loner with no one at home since her parent are nowhere to be seen other than occasional phone calls with her mum (Coco Chiang). This leaves Ching on her own and when Rachel is not there by her side, she has a pet turtle to accompany her. Without a parent or guardian at home, it’s no wonder Ching can be easily seen — from the audience’s point of view — as a misguided youth lacking proper supervision.

Even with the strictly by-the-book principal nicknamed Lady Snape (a perfectly stern-looking Paisley Hu) making sure her students adhered to the school’s policy and this includes proper dressing guidelines, there is so much she can do within her jurisdiction. Out of the school, it’s a different story altogether. Ching and Rachel’s online business selling used panties online may have been morally wrong and unethical, but Yip is smart enough to take a neutral approach in depicting her two characters as just opportunists to make easy money without breaking the law.

The movie doesn’t go to the explicit or sexploitation route other than the occasional moments of these girls removing their panties before packing them into a box and reselling them to any interested customers. For Rachel, it’s just a piece of underwear — nothing more, nothing less, and neither of them resorting to offering their extra services to end up sleeping with their customers. But the story does raise the stakes later in the movie, particularly when Ching’s hopelessly-in-love mode falls for one of her customers played by Adam Pak, where she believes she finally finds her true love.

Blossoms Under Somewhere is mostly benefited from a better-than-expected acting showcase with Marf Yau particularly surprises me the most as a stuttering and awkward Ching Hui. Marf is better known as one of the seven-member Cantopop girl group Collar and yet, she manages to prove to be versatile in her acting prowess, which earned her a Best New Performer nomination for the upcoming 43rd Hong Kong Film Awards. Marf, who also sings the movie’s theme song during the end credits, even received a Best Original Film Song nomination.

While Marf Yau steals the show here, her co-star Sheena Chan deserves equal praise as the disaffected Rachel Ho. The movie tends to suffer from the first-time director’s filmmaking syndrome, notably the way Yip wants to incorporate plenty of themes into her movie — some are clear-cut, while others are subtle  — from tackling loneliness to experiencing first love and longing for freedom. The result is rather erratic while the resolution seen in the well-meaning but somehow a half-baked execution in wrapping up the finale.

Blossoms Under Somewhere may have been a heavily flawed coming-of-age dramedy, which could have used a better narrative polish. Still, I can see the potential in Riley Yip’s directorial debut, albeit rough around the edges and how she manages to bring out the best in her cast.