Review ~ One Metre Sunshine (2003) #一米阳光 (#孙俪)

One Metre Sunshine (一米阳光 ) is the fourth series that Sun Li (孙俪) has acted in if we don't count the one where she was an extra with no lines.  This is also the second time she's acted opposite Peter HO Rundong (何润东).  The first was in Goddess of Mercy (玉观音) which I also wrote a review of (click me).

Like a lot of Sun Li's older series, there is little information in English so I will write a synopsis of this 29 episode series.

SPOILER FREE SYPNOSIS

The story begins with a chance meeting between Yi Chuan Xia (Sun Li) and Jin Zheng Wu (Peter Ho) in Shanghai. Chuan Xia has been sent from the Nian Corporation's head office in Canada to be the manager of their Shanghai branch.  Chuan Xia is having an affair with her superior Nian Liang Xiu (Ai Wei) who is also the younger brother of the Chairman of the Nian Corporation.  Nian Liang Xiu sent a bottle of wine to Chuan Xia and the delivery man happens to be Jin Zheng Wu aka Xiao Wu and that is how they first met.  Xiao Wu also works as a talented bartender in a bar that Chuan Xia happens to frequent.  He quickly takes a liking to her and begins to woo this mysterious woman who is happy to check out the city with him but not happy to answer any personal questions about herself.

Yi Chuan Xia and Jin Zheng Wu

Soon after meeting Xiao Wu, Chuan Xia is called back to Vancouver, Canada because the Chairman of the Nian Corporation is gravely ill.  She is asked by Nian Liang Xiu to do something that will go against her principles.  She does so but is tormented by her guilty conscience.  In an effort to seek release from her pain, she will leave for Lijiang with Xiao Wu.  The three days that she spends with him in Lijiang will change everything for all involved.

SYNOPSIS with SPOILERS

From this point on, there might be information in this review that will include what some may consider spoiler information.

Sun Li as Yi Ai Yuan

Sun Li actually plays two characters in this series.  She plays both Yi Chuan Xia and her younger sister Yi Ai Yuan.  During the three days that Chuan Xia is in Lijiang with Xiao Wu, she falls in love with him.  However, the appearance of Nian Liang Xiu and his henchman Chen Hai Yi spooks her and she writes several letters to her sister Ai Yuan before going to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (玉龙雪山) with Xiao Wu the next morning.  While there, Xiao Wu is blinded by a ray of light and Chuan Xia disappears, she's presumed to have jumped to her death.  Xiao Wu will continue to live in Lijiang as he pines for his lost love.  At the same time, he will also fulfill Chuan Xia's last wishes and periodically send the letters that she left behind for her sister Ai Yuan.

At first the letters were relatively generic letters asking about Ai Yuan's well being.  However, eventually the letters became blank pages and Ai Yuan begins to suspect that something is wrong.  Meanwhile, Nian Liang Xiu has made a deal with his nephew Nian Li Lun (Yin Xiao Tian).  Nian Li Lun is the son of the recently deceased chairman of the Nian Corporation.  He's an irresponsible playboy who never pays attention to the family business.  The deal is if Nian Li Lun is able to get Ai Yuan to marry him, Nian Liang Xiu will give him a certain percentage of shares in the company.  Nian Li Lun will do so quite reluctantly at first and initially, Yi Ai Yuan will reject him.  But in the end, they begin to develop a certain amount of affection for each other and they begin a somewhat messy and ambiguous romantic relationship.

Anyway to cut a long story short, Ai Yuan will of course come to Shanghai and eventually Lijiang in search of her sister.  She will eventually meet Xiao Wu and of course, he will mistake her for Chuan Xia.  Somewhere along the way she will be convinced by Nian Liang Xiu that Xiao Wu is responsible for her sister's death and she will begin a poorly concealed, poorly thought-out and poorly executed plan to take revenge.  Basically, she'll assume her sister's identity but of course pretty much everyone knows that she's not her sister including Xiao Wu.  And as all romances of this nature go, of course both Yi Ai Yuan and Jin Zheng Wu will fall in love and struggle to try and bring their relationship to fruition.

----- end of sypnopsis ----

COMMENTS - includes SPOILERS

Honestly, I cannot recommend this series wholeheartedly.  I don't even think I can wholeheartedly recommend this series to Sun Li fans.  It's not because she didn't perform well, it's just that this series as a whole was just quite flawed.  After a relatively interesting beginning, the script just muddles around, seemingly finding it difficult to decide just how to develop their characters.  In the end, you're left with confusing characters who have mystifying motivations.  It also can get a little pretentious with long pieces of dreary dialogue trying to sound inspiring.  It also seems determined to give every character some redeeming quality no matter how contrived it felt.

Sun Li does do a pretty convincing job at playing two different and contrasting characters.  As Chuan Xia, she appeared mature and a little chilly on the surface yet deeply troubled internally. As Ai Yuan she's young, cute and endearing, sparkly-eyed and lively.  That said though, I don't think a convincing or even great job can overcome a bad script, not even if Sun Li possessed her current prowess when she played these characters could she have saved this show.  Peter Ho was charming as the lovelorn young man who could steal a few women's hearts.  Everyone else was decent except that I wish Ai Wei had more charisma, he should feel something like how Yue Hua feels in a show like Brink of Law.  Some of the characters had to speak quite a lot of English.  Sun Li's was actually better than I expected.  Some of the others weren't as good which made them appear less convincing as people who grew up in Canada.

It's good that they kept Chuan Xia and her motivations relatively mysterious in the beginning  I was actually intrigued by what I thought was a complicated relationship with Nian Liang Xiu.  I thought it was actually quite good that the she had to undergo some form of ECT treatment, even though the version they used in the drama seems a little dangerous and perhaps inaccurate. This makes her suicide later in the series really believable because when we first meet her, she comes across as a very self assured and confident young woman.  By including this scene, they pretty much clearly state just how vulnerable she is emotionally which makes her actions later in the series believable.

Yi Chuan Xia with Nian Liang Xiu

She began an eight year affair with Nian Liang Xiu soon after she graduated from university and soon after she entered the company.  At first I thought he seemed to be a relatively controlling man who spied on her.  I felt that their relationship seemed somewhat abusive.  While he didn't physically abuse her but he seemed to be somewhat emotionally abusive because he seemed to know her every move and seemed to have an emotional hold on her.  She says so at one point in the script too.

Chuan Xia expresses her frustration at
Nian Liang Xiu for keeping her under
constant surveillance.

He also sent his henchman Hai Yi to Lijiang to keep an eye on her and it was probably because he pointed a gun at her that frightened her enough to, at the very least, put suicide first and foremost in her mind.

However, after Chuan Xia's death and as the series plodded on, the script seemed to want to make Nian Liang Xiu into a better man than he initially seemed to be.  They tried to give him some kind of  noble motive for pressuring Chuan Xia into altering Chairman Nian's will.  But I really have trouble understanding how they can try to make a man who spies on this lover, mistrusts her, almost had her executed by his henchman and then tried to force her younger sister to marry his, at that point in time, irresponsible nephew etc to be anything more than the unscrupulous jerk that he appeared to be in the beginning.

Yin Xiao Tian as Nian Li Lun

Actually, this story also frustrated me with what I felt seemed like several misogynistic ideas for a modern series.  I mean, Chuan Xia actually feels grateful that Chairman Nian is trying to pressure her to marry his good for nothing son?!??!??  She doesn't love the idiot and there is nothing to like especially in the beginning of the drama.  She keeps saying that she owes much to the Chairman but every time she talks about her debt of gratitude, it seems like all he did was trust her a lot.  So it seems to me that that's a pretty huge favour he's asking of Chuan Xia.  It's ridiculous that he should ask her to sacrifice herself and marry his moronic son so that she can try and straighten the turd out so that he can one day be worthy of being the chairman of the Nian Corporation. What is even more appallingly bad about the story is that she actually feels guilty that she is unable to accept Chairman Nian's "trust" in her.  And is even more unfathomable is that she actually thinks that Nian Li Lun is a good enough man for her to introduce to her beloved sister.  This is partly why Nian Liang Xiu tries to get Nian Li Lun to woo and marry Ai Yuan because he thinks that that's one of Chuan Xia's dying wishes.  Errrrrrr.....exactly what century is this drama set in??  Maybe cultural differences make it hard or difficult for non-Mainland Chinese viewers to accept it?  I'm not sure but I think modern day women will find this kind of insulting.

Chairman Nian basically telling Chuan Xia
that he can't die with his eyes close if she
doesn't marry his good for nothing son.
What a selfish man!

Also, while I also found it interesting that Chuan Xia would have Xiao Wu send blank pieces of paper to Ai Yuan and I wanted to know what Chuan Xia's intentions were, sadly, the script never explained that.  At least, if they did, I must have missed it somewhere in the middle.  So in the end, it just felt like a loose end.

Hai Yi and Nian Liang Xiu talk about a
book which ultimately has little impact
on the story.

They also did several strange things like make a bit of a fuss about the book that Chuan Xia left behind just before her death.  She was reading Isabel Allende's The Portrait in Sepia.  So they made a big deal of Hai Yi stealing that novel and giving it to Nian Liang Xiu.  Nian Liang Xiu then passes the book to Hai Yi and asks him to read it.  He reads it then tells Nian Liang Xiu that he doesn't quite get it except that he felt moved by a story about an unwavering love.  And then they just pretty much left it as that.  That just made the choice of that particular book feel almost arbitrary.

Aside from the arbitrary choice of the book, many of the characters come off as quite inconsistent.  Hai Yi, who seems laughably omniscient, suddenly grows a conscience after he suddenly falls in love with a very annoying tour guide in Lijiang.  Towards the end, after Ai Yuan fails in her half-hearted revenge plan, there is a poorly explained change of heart where she will suddenly and inexplicably offer herself to Nian Li Lun.  I also disliked it that they had Ai Yuan agree to a wedding and then leave Nian Li Lun right before they go through with it.  That kind of irresponsible willfulness and cruelty just doesn't seem to fit her character that well at all.

The pacing of the series was painfully slow for the most part.  After the initially interesting setup, the main story crawls to a snail's pace.  The script spent way too much time detailing Ai Yuan's and Nian Li Lun's relationship, so much so that it began to feel somewhat repetitive.  There were also so many miss opportunities that prevented Xiao Wu and Ai Yuan from meeting earlier that it started to feel forced. They also had several annoying characters and side stories that they could reduce significantly.  For example, the whole nonsense with Xiao Wu's artist friend and his girlfriend undermines the flow of the main story and should not have been given so much weight.  And that's only one example.

I really could go into greater detail if I wanted to but I think that my points have been made.  So in conclusion, I would say that unless you are a very dedicated fan of either Sun Li or Peter Ho or any of the other actors in this series OR unless you are a fan of romances whether they make sense or not, I would put this in the bottom half of your to-watch list.

For other Reviews of Sun Li's work, please head over to this page. CLICK ME.  There are links to other reviews and comments on her other work as well.