Us and Them · reception & legacy
2018 · René Liu
How Us and Them has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It opened to a record-shattering Labor Day weekend in China in 2018 — then got engulfed in a presale ticket-refund scandal, with mass bulk cancellations sparking accusations of inflated numbers and a genuine industry reckoning. The controversy has since faded, and it now lives a second life as a Netflix-era cry-movie passed between international viewers.
What's debated
The perennial fight: is the central reunion swooningly bittersweet, or is it romanticising a married man's emotional affair with his ex?
Its footprint
It's inseparable from René Liu's own signature 2000 ballad 'Hou Lai' ('Later'), which gives the film its Chinese title — and the trailer's gut-punch line, roughly 'later, we had everything… except us,' was quoted everywhere on the Chinese internet.
Where it stands
A certified Zhou Dongyu tearjerker and a staple of 'films that destroyed me' lists — beloved by East Asian romance devotees, still under-seen by Western cinephiles despite sitting right there on Netflix.