For years, Grandma Shurou from Chaoshan has lived on the letters and remittances from her husband who left for Nanyang to survive the war and never returned. When her debt-ridden grandson Xiaowei secretly travels to Thailand to find his rumoured 'millionaire' grandpa, he returns with shocking news: his grandpa is long gone, and the person Grandma has exchanged letters with for years is a stranger. As Xiaowei digs
deeper, a long-buried misunderstanding spanning three generations begins to unravel, revealing a truth that binds two families across borders and time.
The Garden Cinema View:
Continuing writer-director Lan Hongchun's long-standing exploration of Teochew culture, Dear You brings to the screen the rarely explored history of Chaoshanese migration to Southeast Asia after the Chinese Civil War. This regional specificity, however, becomes the source of its emotional universality.
Produced on a modest budget with a largely non-professional cast, the film became an unexpected box-office phenomenon in China, the latest addition to the recent trend of low-budget, word-of-mouth hits such as Backrooms and Obsession.
This appeal here lies not in spectacle but in its almost religious faith in love, loyalty, and human connection. Although the film occasionally veers towards the theatrical, its sincerity remains disarming, and its emotional centre ultimately belongs to the female protagonists and to the handwritten qiaopi letters. In an age of instant communication, Dear You quietly restores the beauty of slow correspondence and the enduring bonds that transcend time and distance.
In Teochew with English and simplified Chinese subtitles.
