This is a film to watch if you're in an analytical mood, even though it does not aspire to be anything more than a superficial romantic comedy - a job that it does just fine.
This modern Chinese tale of love and work tells the story of Lala, a woman in her mid-twenties who gets a good job with an American company in China (that only gives 10 days annual leave) with the intention of working her way up to the top. Unpretentious, talented and hard-working, she has all the tools to get there, until love gets in her way.
How this conflict between work and love is presented is the most interesting aspect of the film. The convention is that love conquers all and a woman will forget her career for love. But here the convention is broken, and loyalty and the desire to better oneself are just as important.
This is not a totally new phenomenon in Asian cinema. Anyone familiar with Japanese films will have come across the "do your best!" mantra. Speaking once to a Japanese sociology professor, he commented how this "do your best" attitude played an important role in Japanese development after WW2. Consequently it's not surprising to see a 21st century neoliberal take on the same mantra: do your best for yourself and for your corporation.
As corporations take over China and wages decrease in relation to living costs, most people will have little choice but to put their career before love, and loyalty to their company before loyalty to anything else.
In that sense, the film is an unwitting indictment of the very culture it seeks to glorify. This alone makes it worthwhile.
