Focusing on the mental state of contemporary adolescents in a foreign land, Strawberry Fields Forever is a drama film co-directed by two youth filmmakers Qian Rui and Meng Chunqing. It delivers fascinating boldness and casuality, unconscious rebellion and freedom, and sometimes even the danger of implicitness and disputaton. Eve, a young lady who has not secured a job after graduation, appeals to the foci of the camera as a collection of thousands of ordinary girls in one. For the dream of her girlfriend Monkey, she drifts in London, attempting to seek consolence in the relationship with her friends and partner. However, after an audition one day, Eve realizes that Monkey cannot truly understand her from the heart, and the conflict between the two becomes more and more intense, which leads to the end of their relationship eventually. Her encounter with Dex at the audition turns a new page of two solitary individuals, about which wandering and companionship, loneliness and playfulness are brought forth into the narrative of the film.

As can be easily discovered, most of the scenes were shot in London, where the typical red double-decker buses, historical River Thames and London Bridge, as well as the daily route to the campus in Elephant & Castle, are captivated with the viewers. These images weave the whole film through private memories through charming hand-held camera. Bathed in the warm tones of the pictures, with retro image texture that builds up a public space about emotions, the film creates both a temporal and spacial illusion. From several trivial details, the audience may glimpse the current situation of how lives for Chinese are like in London, and how their identities as producers, actors and musical performers are undergone with fluctuations and reconstruction in such a modern landscape.

Much as the yellow subtitles in handwritten font at the beginning, the film pays tribute to a lot of masterpieces, among which the most obvious example is considered to be Boy Meets Girl by Leo Carax: in those moments when running is granted free, a sense of youthful indulgence, the natural sweetness of meeting, and the unexpected destiny is rushed out of the frame. The directors, nevertheless, do not hault at imitating respectable masters blindly. Within a context of French profligacy and romance, a unique sense of liberty and laxity under the female perspective is occasionally interspersed in the film, reminding us of the style of work from Xinyuan Zheng Lu. Undeniably, they have always maintained a considerable sense of their audio-visual language while incorporating many of their own ingenious ideas into the compositions. Despite that they have yet to get rid of the framework of imitation, indebted to the cinematographic style of some film masters, and that a certain way of personalized expression has not been formed as most of the scenes are based on their life experience. It is still worth praising that the integrity of several scenarios demonstrates their passion for filmmaking and that talent revealed through such affection.

In the nostalgic state of affairs they hope to visualize, intimate relationships between girls and boys are ruptured, reconfigured, and intertwined. When Eve, cast by Li Xu, asks Dex “What is real?” trapped in her emotional ditch, it is as if she is responding to the Beatles’ lyric “Nothing is real” in Strawberry Fields Forever, the same name of the film. Perhaps, instead of requiring a completely real answer, we should embrace every virtual moment of the present, because it is in those flowing voidness that we are able to mostly approach the truth. When the film ends up with an overwhelmingly colorful image, accompanied by Ding Yujie’s music, the audience will realise that the immature past and production flaws will unconditioanlly reach a far more distant future through every secret detail and implying line of the film.

In this sense, it acts more as a love letter to London, rather than a notebook that bids farewell to their student age. In the dimmed and damp corners, around those skimmed streets, left behind are the exclusive footprints of each passer-by. We see Pear singing on the grass when playing with the African drum, we glimpse the tears of Eve and Monkey when they fight with each other, and we witness Eve and Dex fly all the way along graffiti walls in respledent costumes... The pieces make up the jigsaw puzzle of London life, where everyone is struggling to live, regardless of loneliness and bewilderedness that may appear to them, as the strawberry fields forever, living is easy with eyes closed.