So far, "Sweet Honey" is still the highest score of all the works that Chen Kexin has ever filmed.
The end of this film also foreshadows Chen Kexin's future, or reveals Chen Kexin's state of mind - in his concept, the mainland is the place with the most development potential.
Shortly after the release of "Sweet Honey" in 1996, he was invited to Hollywood to make a movie.
Who invited it? Steven Spielberg.
Why the invitation? The big director's beloved wife, Kate Capshaw, said after watching "Sweet Honey" that she admired Chen Kexin.
In the end, Chen Kexin really made a movie "Love Letter" tailor-made for her.
Off-topic: Very few people have seen this movie, but the quality and perception of the film are definitely higher than the Douban score.
After filming this movie, Chen Kexin returned to China. He is like Dawn and Maggie Cheung in "Sweet Honey", and finally found a stage that really belongs to him.
Or, when Dawn and Maggie Cheung got off the green-skinned train, an era that belonged to Chen Kexin also quietly began.
If you want to understand a director's story, you must connect all his past works, and also pay attention to the details in each work. (This theory is not suitable for many of today's geniuses with the word "director")
For Chen Kexin, "Sweet Honey" is a person who has stories and signs in front of and behind the scenes.
Unlike many native-born Hong Kong directors, Chen Kexin did not choose iconic old Port buildings such as MaYouDi and Chungking Mansions to start the story, and the place where Li Xiaojun and Li Qiao first met in "Sweet Honey" was at McDonald's. (It is said that even this McDonald's scene was filmed by Chen Kexin through the KFC storefront)
Chen Kexin's own experience is quite "wandering", and the sense of alienation and desire for "integration" in his films are also very obvious.
Relative to regional characteristics, Chen Kexin's films are destined to favor personal style from the beginning.
It is so hilarious to say, but the time when Chen Kexin really went north has to be counted from 2005, that is, "If Love".
Since then, Chen Kexin's works based on "Disciple", "Cast Name" and "Wuxia" have entered a new stage - to meet friends with martial arts and reconstruct the jianghu.
When "Chinese Partner" and "Dear" came out, Chen Kexin's "Hong Kong flavor" was basically gone.
Seeing Chen Kexin as a director again is "Win the Championship", which tells the past of the Chinese women's volleyball team and the spirit of the women's volleyball team, and the upcoming personal biography of Li Na, who rewrites the history of Asian tennis, "Alone on the Court".
It is not difficult to see from the above works that for Chen Kexin, the "water and soil dissatisfaction" that went north seems to have never appeared.
Unlike the directors who have entered the mainland market with a strong Hong Kong flavor and Hong Kong plot, Chen Kexin always seems to know what the current mainland market needs most.
For himself, the number of film works as a producer > the number of film works as a director is enough to show that in Chen Kexin, commercial and artistic can coexist symbiotically.
He once said in an interview that in today's Chinese film market, if you want to box office, you must cater to small-town youth.
I have to say that Chen Kexin is really sober.
In fact, back to "Sweet Honey", this movie is enough to have enough dog blood from the plot or lines, and a large number of places full of "fatalism". But it is precisely Chen Kexin's sobriety and self-preservation, as well as the kind of purposeful indistinctness, that saves the film. (The actor's appearance and acting skills are also indispensable)
I only hope that Chen Kexin's sobriety can be seen and learned by more and more filmmakers with "clear goals". Perhaps only then will the film market usher in a new era.