More than just a love story - weave plot lines, held together by some great acting and filming

Beautiful weave of life stories of people who board a cruise ship, then follows them on-board and land. There is a lot more to it than the love story which carries the plot to the end. Some formulaic and quite a bit of propaganda promoting the Chinese values and expertise on the world scene, but it feels quite true to real life - we can relate to the push and pull of the economic relationships between China and the West from the headlines, whether it's cooperation or strategies to undermine each other.

Unlike other viewers, I was glad of the racism slant in the story - it's hard to watch, but all too real. It's really important to expose the damage that even low level racism can cause, especially as we've seen developments after the pandemic.

As a westerner watching, I found the scenes of chaotic mob blame when things go wrong quite frustrating, but rather believable - they made their point!

The acting is phenomenal - Hans Zhang steals every scene he’s in, whether he grieves, loves or just smiles, you can feel it! I really liked the quiet, understated development of Wang Likun's character - yes, some of her accidents and incidents are silly, but quite useful to the plot, and you can see how each crisis is adding to her character - the actress brings this to life. Unlike other viewers I think that self blame and PTSD as a survivor of the coach accident is believable and quite real, and her reaction is nothing to do with taking responsibility, but a psychological réponse.

Some of the other acting is fantastic. I found the scenes between Ding Kai and his mother utterly magnetic, even when they are communicating silently - hard to describe why!

There are a few plot holes and the acting of the European actors is quite stilted, as is their dialogue - it feels as if it was translated to Mandarin and back again. Not to speak of… “there’s a famous Chinese saying” - how well versed the Western senior crue are in Chinese philosophy! It was a good laugh to spot these sayings!
The “captain, my captain” - lovely, but quite over the top in his patronising kindness!

I would probably watch it again if there were well crafted subtitles to enjoy the dialogue fully - seeing it with Google translate is hard work, sometimes funny and I frequently needed to stop and “retranslate” to work out what it means. I often felt that there was a well crafted dialogue that I missed out on, I could just listen to the beautiful tones and guess.

I loved some of the music, it’s quite mesmerising!

The filming and scenery need a mention too - it takes you around the world with the tourists, but it also gives tiny insights in many ways of life - from tiny fishing and mountain village to high rise Shanghai office, with the city and the river as its stars.

Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable watch.

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