1789. Love Is Not Blind (失恋33天) (2011)

Starring: Bai Baihe, Wen Zhang, Zhang Jiayi

Director: Teng Huatao

Running Time: 110 mins

Love Is Not Blind is a Chinese film about a woman who, after a bitter breakup, continues to struggle in her love life as she deals with a difficult client that pushes her to look deep into her past actions, and wonder what the reason is that she’s always been so unlucky in love.

The romantic comedy formula may be one that can be adapted to any story in any country, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always going to make for a good film. Despite its slick and modern appearance, Love Is Not Blind lacks the humour and heart to make for a properly enjoyable or even engaging film, instead suffering with a far more stale and seemingly forced atmosphere throughout.

The main issue that I have with this film is that, as well as being relatively uncompelling, the lead characters in this movie are far from likable. Centring a romance around someone who’s not completely angelic is always a little riskier, but it can make for some great stories, as films like When Harry Met Sally will show you.

The fact remains, however, that this film’s main character’s bad points far outweigh her good points, and as she assesses her romantic history and why she’s never been able to be successful in love, you lose more and more sympathy for her, rather than actually gaining the emotional connection that the film is trying to create.

Now, you can say at least that that side of the story, giving the lead character some genuine weak points, is something that pushes the film away from being totally formulaic. However, the rest of the movie is largely far more generic, and doesn’t put in the effort to tell a compelling story at any time, rather forcing through an uninteresting and uninspiring romantic comedy-drama from start to finish.

What’s worse is that there’s no real humour here either. Apart from the fact that a lot of the intended comedy comes from various irritating side characters being irritating, the lack of heart in the screenplay is replicated in the relatively humourless mood throughout, and as such, there’s even less opportunity to find enjoyment in this film, making it just as boring as it is unlikable.

The only main positive that I can draw from Love Is Not Blind is that it’s a fairly good-looking film. Whilst the atmosphere is hugely misjudged, at least the visuals are entertaining enough, thanks to a slick and modern directing style that works well to ground this movie in the world of fashion, divas and more that it is set in.

On the whole, however, I wasn’t a fan of Love Is Not Blind. Missing the mark when it comes to good heart, characters, writing and comedy, it’s a consistently dull and unlikable film that never does enough to rectify its problems by breaking out of a somewhat forced and generic story, and that’s why I’m giving it a 6.4.