Xiaoshimei's Strategy Guide for Winning Her Shijie's Heart (2021)

If you can survive the painful sound mixing, you may enjoy this one.

Right away, it's clear that the sound mixing isn't great and that makes it hard to sit back and enjoy the ride. The music is louder than the dialogue, yet somehow the cutesy Xiaoshimei's screams were more piercing than the music. Combined with the dissonant sound effects, it just made my head hurt, which is a real shame.

That being said, it's still a cute story with a fun concept. We have seen the stoic/serious character partnered with the childish/cutesy character many times before, so it's at least nice to see a hint or two that the childish/cutesy act is being played up more than usual to gain sympathy and affection. By the end, I found myself wishing that this short film had been given a slightly longer runtime so that aspect of the plot could have been fleshed out even just a little bit more. Maybe then there would have been a bit more chemistry between the characters, although the actors both made a very commendable effort with the limited time they were given.

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Nothing to see here

Honestly, it is for a challenge that I decided to have a look at this very short movie (less than 3 minutes). As it is very short and helped me completing a challenge I'm not upset to have seen it. I just feel there is not a lot to see here.

The story is almost non-existent, the music is horrendously superposed into the dialogs and the actresses are rather unconvincing in their roles, with some very bad make-up. They don't have much to act on, so not putting the blame on them but I honestly cannot say I was interested by anything happening on screen.

I would not recommend it. In the same vein, a short Chinese movie featuring a same-sex relationship between two women and providing in a very short amount of time some interesting storytelling is "The Fox Spirit and the Little Priest", radically better. I strongly suggest you watch it rather than this one.

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