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Originated by Shanghai corporate video house Must Production, and directed by 33-year-old, China-based French writer-director Fabien Gaillard, LAO WAI is as remarkable for what it doesn\'t do as for what it does. Avoiding every cliche that cross-cultural romances are heir to-and especially the oriental exoticism especially favoured by the French-Gaillard\'s filmic love-child from his five years in China has an utter naturalness and touching simplicity in which the central relationship is the thing, played with cute-free charm by both Han Dantong, a Central Academy of Drama graduate in her first big-screen role after some TV drama, and Gauthier Roubichou, a Shanghai-based singer-guitarist with the group Swing Dynasty.
With its unforced portrayal of everyday life in China, easy rhythm that\'s neither arty nor commercial, and avoidance of both "chopstick cliches" and the usual Mainland stereotypes, the movie sets a grown-up standard that other filmmakers would do well to emulate. For Roubichou\'s Chinese-speaking Paul, China is simply a place where he lives and works, not a convenient location for soul-searching or spiritual anomie; and for Han\'s young teacher Mei, Paul is simply a sympathetic foreigner she falls for, not an exotic catch or cultural/social impediment.
It\'s a measure of the leads\' chemistry and the film\'s seemingly effortless simplicity that, with a predictable, almost zero plot, it manages to sustain even its tight, hour-and-a-half running time. Some viewers may demand more drama, and more fully developed characters, and there are patches in Mei\'s early dialogue that seem over-simplistic. But LAO WAI sets its borders modestly and achieves its apparent objective: a boy-meets-girl story of the purest kind in which almost everything is either beneath the surface or doesn\'t even need to be stated nowadays.