Xinhua Insight: Midlife crisis movie genre prevails for shifting China

Life may not be as hard as it seems for stars playing downtrodden roles in films about midlife crises -- the popular genre has fetched billions at the box office over the past two months.

Viewer turnout has been extraordinary for the latest films in the genre, "Lost in Hong Kong" and "Goodbye Mr. Loser", which took in 1.61 billion yuan (250 million U.S. dollars) and 1.17 billion yuan respectively at the box office.

Directed by Xu Zheng, a famed Chinese comedy director, "Lost in Hong Kong" tells a story of a man abandoning his life as a company manager to head to Hong Kong and find his first love.

In "Goodbye Mr. Loser", the middle-aged hero daydreams about his life at college, where he regains his lost self-dignity by pursuing a girl and restoring his disappointed mother's confidence in him.

The two comedies are the latest in a string of movies about midlife crises, referring to depression and fatigue men sometimes suffer between the age of 40 and 60.

Despite the specific age of protagonists, the films are attracting viewers both young and middle-aged.

Xu, the director of "Lost in Hong Kong", said a midlife crisis is something that everybody runs into. Movies depicting this theme always manage to strike a chord with the middle-aged audience.

"Those in their thirties and forties have a more mature taste and are willing to buy film tickets. I just made a movie based on my thoughts on life, which proved particularly interesting to them," he said in a previous interview.

As Chinese society enters a stage of transition, midlife crises have become more common.

Zhang Yiwu, professor of Chinese language and film critic at Peking University, said these films dramatize trivial thoughts and feelings from real life, reflecting on the midlife crisis in a way worth applauding.

Liu Fan, a researcher at Chinese National Academy of Arts, said the fact that most producers are in their midlife "makes them more capable of making the most of the theme".

Apart from the mid-aged audience, younger generations who are about to enter midlife are also buying into the theme and have contributed to the genre's popularity.

A survey showed that almost 85 percent of audiences watching such films were aged between 18 and 35, with the group between 18 and 25 taking up 35.77 percent of the total.

Film critics believe as midlife crisis films tend to compare youth and adulthood, this makes the films more appealing to younger audiences.

In the two latest films, the heroes both dream of their past and reunions with their first love, yet both end up falling back into cruel reality. These scenes act to remind the audience of their own efforts to escape from reality, which often turn out in vain.

"By comparing the different phases of life, those films can easily drag the audience into their daydreams, giving them a break from reality," Liu said.

But they all end up coming back to real life, he said, reminding the audience to live in the moment.

"As long as a comedy can provoke thoughts on social issues and resonate with the audience at the same time, then you can't deny its excellence," he said.

Such films urge audiences to have a clear idea of both where their life is now and where they want it to be.

"'Goodbye Mr. Loser ' is actually a poignant film, which confronts the audience with the cruel reality of life in an amusing way," user "Taotaosi" commented on his Sina Weibo microblog.

User "Junior Field" said "a good comedy is one that sheds insight into life, amid bursting laughter. 'Goodbye Mr. Loser ' did exactly this."

The genre is one of many cashing in on China's film boom.

Critics say the success of more film genres demonstrates the increasing diversity of the Chinese film market, which was dominated by epics and comedies only a few years ago.

By September 5, Chinese cinemas took in 30 billion yuan, already exceeding the 2014 total of 29.6 billion yuan. More than half of the income came from domestic films, official data showed. Endit