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New Lala movie 'not about office intrigues'

By Liu Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-13 10:25

After watching several episodes of Sex and the City, actress-turned-director Xu Jinglei decided it was time to come up with her own romantic comedy.

Adapted from a bestseller, Go Lala Go! follows a girl as she transforms from office novice to a sophisticated HR manager.

This magical transformation is, in large part, the work of Patricia Field, stylist for Sex and the City, Ugly Betty, and The Devil Wears Prada.

Field's amazing creativity has her mixing a luxurious blouse with low-cost accessories and pants. For example, a pair of earrings used in the film costs only 24 yuan ($3.5). Field found them in Xiushui, Beijing's well-known flea market. Field also cut an ordinary T-shirt and made it into an off-shoulder one. Now that brand has launched a T-shirt in the same style.

Thanks to her association with the film, dozens of brands came forward to sponsor it.

Xu had made up her mind to rope in Field from the very beginning. After exchanging more than 100 e-mails, Field finally arrived in Beijing.

"She's expensive, but definitely worth the money!" Xu says. "She makes inexpensive things look like those of designer brands."

An experienced director, with four films under her belt, Xu has never experienced the life of an office-goer. So she and her two scriptwriters talked to 13 senior managers of Fortune 500 companies, and even credited them as honorary writers. These interactions helped her craft an authentic script about corporate life.

Xu also interviewed many of the employees of these companies and worked their stories into the script. In the film, a newly recruited Lala carries a pot of soup in the bus on her way to work. Every day, she changes the vegetables in the soup and that is her lunch all week. Xu says it is the true story of someone she interviewed.

Office politics has recently become a hot topic on both the big and small screen in China. Even the spy story Lurk and the period drama War and Beauty were seen by many as office politics survival manuals. But Xu is quick to clarify that hers is not another effort at showing how to climb the corporate ladder. The relationship between Lala and the company's sales director, played by Taiwan icon Stanley Huang, is the main story, she says.

"Office intrigues are not what interest me," she says. "This movie is more about a woman's growth. Between career success and love, she finally discovers what brings her real happiness.

"I wanted to make a beautiful film that everybody would love to see."

The film premieres on Thursday.

China Daily

(China Daily 04/13/2010 page19)