Yolo – Film Review
by Frank L.

Director – Ling Jia
Writers – Shin Adachi, Yu Bu, Yupeng Guo
Stars – Ling Jia, Jiayin Lei, Xiaofei Zhang

This film appears to centre on boxing. Its heroine is Du Leying (Ling Jia). She is severely overweight and has not worked since she left college ten years previously. She looks like the classic depressed person who has “taken to the bed” or in her case the sofa.

Although she is incapable of doing anything practical, she has a boyfriend who unfortunately is having an affair with her best friend, and her best friend is pregnant. In addition, there is a family row over property and Leying moves out of the apartment and hitches up with a thirty-year-old boxer. There are any number of subsidiary issues but the main point is that Leying gradually gets transfixed by boxing, starts to train and loses 50 kilos.

The finer points of the twists and turns of the plot are not that easy to follow as the sub-titles flash, far too often, up on the screen and are gone before they can be easily read. What is remarkable about the film is Ling Jia’s weight. She too loses 50 kilos once the part of Leying requires her to take up boxing and do the excruciating training that boxing demands.

However, that decision enabled Leying to live the title of the film “Yolo” which stands for “You Only Live Once”. Leying’s journey into boxing enables her to be at one with herself. Even if she does not achieve the goals which she desires in boxing, the other goals which she does achieve incidentally are more enduring and therefore of greater substance.

This film has been a huge success in China. While it is outwardly a film about boxing it is not the familiar story of the hero or in this instance, the heroine winning against the odds. In fact, it is the opposite. What is important is that Leying’s training and self-discipline enable her to fight a far more experienced fighter. That is an achievement. The hard work gives her a sense of pride in herself. At the end of the film, she is a very different person both physically and mentally to the thirty-something-year-old woman that was sprawled on a sofa at the beginning of the film. For all the blood and gore of the boxing ring, it leaves you at the end contemplating what is success. It is thought-provoking.