B FOR BUSY

Don't be put off by this film's terrible English title—this is a romcom fresh enough to earn 8.3 points out of 10 on Douban. Golden Rooster-nominated director and actor Xu Zheng plays Lao Bai, a divorced middle-aged man who lives in Shanghai and teaches the elderly how to draw. Unlike the typical romcom featuring the young and beautiful, this film follows Lao Bai's quiet, restrained courtship of three very different, strongly independent middle-aged women. B for Busy is distinctly Shanghainese, complete with jokes, street scenes, and references to food only locals would truly understand. Director Shao Yihui (who lived in Shanghai for six years) boldly shoots whole scenes in Shanghai dialect, which impressed many Douban reviewers, even if they did have to read subtitles to understand.