A WEDDING INVITATION (Oh Ki-hwan). 101 minutes. Subtitles. Opens Friday (May 31). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
A Wedding Invitation is an old-school romance with a few weak laughs and a stronger dose of tears.
Qiao Qiao (Bai Baihe) breaks up with her college sweetheart, Li Xing (Eddie Peng) because they need to focus on their careers. But they agree that if neither is married in five years, they’ll wed each other. When the time’s up, he invites her to his wedding and she heads out, determined to get him back.
The laughs arise from Qiao Qiao’s discomfort at hanging out with Li Xing and his fiancée and her desperate phone calls to her gay best friend (Jiang Jin Fu), who’s dragged in at one point to pose as her boyfriend.
Bai and Peng make amiable romantic leads. They’re both slightly prickly and occasionally tender, but the movie doesn’t make many demands on them until the one-hour mark, when things turn dramatic with a twist that’s as old as the hills but works every time if you have a taste for the weepies.
The camera work is nothing special, and neither Beijing nor Shanghai provides any scenic beauty.
