Rating 8/10
A Chinese family drama spoken largely in Teochew is not an easy sell to the average American moviegoer. The language is native to the Chaoshan region of southern China, giving Dear You a cultural specificity that might initially seem limiting. But there is nothing inaccessible about its portrait of love. Director and co-writer Lan Hongchun, whose earlier films include Proud of Me and Back to Love, brings a delicate touch to this third Teochew-language feature. This modestly budgeted film became a massive sleeper hit in China, and for good reason. It is a deeply affecting story that begins with a grandson’s search for his long-lost grandfather. In the process, he uncovers a shared history shaped by a remarkable devotion.
Deep in debt and desperate for money, Hiou-ui (Zheng Runqi) travels from China to Thailand in 2018, hoping to find the long-lost grandfather he believes may have left behind a fortune. Den Bhagseng (Wang Yantong) left his wife and children decades earlier to seek work in Southeast Asia. For nearly 30 years, letters and money continued to arrive back home, allowing his wife, Iap Sogriu (played in old age by Wu Shaoqing), to believe that although they were separated, he had never forgotten those he left behind. Then, in 1978, one final delivery convinced her that Bhagseng had abandoned them and started a new life abroad. Armed with a collection of old qiaopi, letters that Chinese emigrants sent home along with money, Hiou-ui begins tracing his grandfather’s past.
The search gives way to an extended flashback centered on Bhagseng, the young Sogriu (Wang Xiaohui), and a Chinese-Thai woman named Zia Lamgi (Li Sitong, with Usha Seamkhum playing her older self). It is here that Dear You finds its true heart, in the sacrifices they make for one another. I am being deliberately vague because much of the pleasure comes from discovering how these lives become intertwined.
Dear You is a gentle tale whose charms accumulate gradually. Its impact continued to grow on me even after it was over, as I thought about everything that had unfolded. I will admit that some of the plotting is a bit contrived. A typhoon disrupts the mail at precisely the worst moment, one of several coincidences that keep the melodrama moving. You can occasionally feel the screenwriter arranging circumstances so that a misunderstanding can take root and remain unresolved for decades.
And yet, I found myself willing to forgive those manipulations because the feelings are so sincere. These are people you come to care about and want to embrace. By the time the truth about those lost years comes to light, the tenderness of the resolution carries real emotional weight. Dear You finds something profoundly moving in the years between an act of kindness and the moment someone finally understands what it meant.
09-08-26