Relative Sonics. Etcetera Theatre.

STAR RATING:  2.5 stars

A lot, perhaps too much, is going on in Chinese writer and Director Mingming Liu’s two-hander Relative Sonics.

At one level, it is a coming-of-age, will-they, won’t-they, odd-couple love story between shy, introspective, 16-year-old Erica (Alina Zhou) and her gregarious, camera-crazy schoolmate Edison (Yudun Wang). The two meet in Row G of Erica’s dad’s cinema and bond over popcorn, repeated viewings of The Dark Knight, and volunteering at the local history museum. “Everything was ordinary, except when Erica was there”, confides Edison in one of several narrated passages that intersperse the economically written dialogue.

The storyline follows the duo’s on-and-off friendship over four years as the teenagers first grow together, then seemingly inevitably drift apart. She tries to share her soul. He tries to help her find her voice through a budding songwriting career. However, neither one is truly listening to the other. Petty jeal Save ousies of the “you said she’s special, and you never say that about me” type rear their ugly heads. Events boil over when someone uploads a film to YouTube that Edison has covertly made about Erica, much to the girl’s understandable chagrin. Anticipate subdued, melancholy fireworks.

Not content with charting the romance, Mingming Liu complicates matters considerably by interweaving the narrative with dream-like scenes featuring grumpy, obsessive phonograph inventor Thomas Edison and his long-suffering wife (also played by Zhou and Wang). It is her voice on history’s first-ever recording, and she is not pleased about it. “Will you remember me and not just the voice in the machine?” she demands of her husband. Liu struggles to unify the twin narrative strands in Relative Sonics or to show us what connects the two couples.

Add in a bunch of seemingly symbolic references to various types of recording devices, and you might find yourself a bit puzzled about what it all signifies. Still, Zhou and Wang are amiable enough company for an hour, and the all-Chinese production team does a clever job of mocking up graphics from the pre-dawn era of social media (also known as 2008).

Writer and Director:  Mingming Liu