There aren't very many realistic relationship movies out there. Most are mired down by cliches and melodrama where everything always works out in the end. If that is what you're hoping for with this movie, you'd best move on, for this is one of the best films about relationships that I've seen in recent years.

Relationships are work. Period. And the more expectations that two people bring to the table, and the more differing goals that are brought, the more likelihood that the relationship is ultimately doomed.

This is a poignant story of two people who meet on a train, heading home for Chinese New Year. I've lived in China. There is no greater mass migration on the planet than during Chinese New Year. I lived in Shenzhen, a city of 20+ million. The city looked like a ghost town.

Jianqing is a young man living in Beijing. His dream is to create video games. He works at a small kiosk. He doesn't make much money, and his room in his apartment looks more like a metro station...people crammed together and living in bedrooms that look more like cubicles. It's a simple existence that doesn't seem to hold much promise, based upon Jianqing's dreams.

Xiao-Xiao is a young and vibrant woman, full of life, and seems to hop from place to place. Her dream is finding true love. So much so, that she invents stories of boyfriends in order to make her own goal--Jianqing--jealous to the point where she hopes he might come around.

Eventually, Xiao-Xiao pretty much takes the initiative and the two make love. She moves into Jianqing's cramped bedroom. Xiao-Xiao's dream is fulfilled, and she even reminds a frustrated Jianqing that she doesn't care if they live in a box. However, Jianqing firmly believes that Xiao-Xiao can't possibly be happy in their current living situation. In the process of trying to better their living situation, he slowly begins to alienate her, failing to understand that Xiao-Xiao only cares about being with him.

The story is masterfully told by taking us back to 2007 and progressing through the years up to present time. All of the flashbacks are done in color. The present is in black and white. The director is demonstrating a time when dreams were attempting to be realized up to the point where everything is now stale, desolate, and unfulfilled through the black and white landscape of crushed and unrealized dreams. Of course, in the present, after bumping into each other for a final time, they begin to wonder if things could have been different. Based upon how they each saw things, they realize that it couldn't have been. Xiao-Xiao has a bit more wisdom to see the folly than Jianqing.

Jianqing can only focus on--what he feels--his failure to provide for Xiao-Xiao. Xiao-Xiao already knows the futility that he was already everything to her; that he never needed to struggle and fight to make her happy. She was already happy. But, of course, he failed to see it.

Only in the end, when they are finally able to let go, do the vibrant colors begin to fill the landscape, almost as if it were happening in that very moment of their realization and appreciation for what they had...and frankly, still have.

Not only do people's expectation and goals often differ, but people also change as time moves on. Depending upon the couple, these can appear to be insurmountable barrier. And for those who choose to refuse to see what is right in front of them in the other, it too often is just that: an insurmountable barrier.

Most relationships fail due to a lack of communication; to talk things out when it's obvious that things are moving in two different directions, taking each person with them. Perhaps a film like this will inspire folks to look a bit harder at what--and more importantly who--is right in front of them. It's funny and sad how often most people fail to notice.