The Substitute

The Substitute cirector Zero Chou has spent much of her career making WLW content. She’s good at it. Chou is someone who knows her craft and knows how to tell a story. It’s this mastery of her craft and genre that elevates The Substitute to being more than the sum of its romantic tropes.

The Substitute’s story is filled with classic romance cliches. We start with a shy girl named Lu. Lu is obsessed with a livestreamer named Ni Ke. Lu gets a chance to meet her idol when Ni Ke shows up at Lu’s judo club. Not only do the girls have a charged fight scene, but Ni Ke sticks around. Ni Ke is transitioning from livestreaming to acting in films. Lu’s judo club has been chosen for extra and stunt work. But while Ni Ke begins to pursue Lu, Lu doesn’t trust her. Lu believes that Ni Ke’s interest in her is just content creation. Seemingly proving her right, Ni Ke disappears without a trace one day. Lu fills in for Ni Ke in the film. 3 years later, situations are reversed. Lu is a big star and Ni Ke finds herself as Lu’s stunt double on her latest film.

I adore the way The Substitute works with romantic tropes. This is such a good execution of the fangirl/idol relationship. While it’s still a light romance, The Substitute at least acknowledges the potential issues with a parasocial relationship. Lu doesn’t actually know Ni Ke. And when she does meet her in person, Lu’s image of Ni Ke crashes and burns. But despite Lu’s guarded nature, Ni Ke pursues her and even live streams an original song about her. That’s great romantic wish fulfillment! What really works is that Zero Chou knows how to craft a movie and a romance. This is definitely a lighter film for her. It’s a very simple movie made by someone with the intelligence to know how to portray simple tropes in a quality way.

There’s also some real darkness to The Substitute. It works in tandem with the romantic wish fulfillment really well. Lu’s home life is really bleak. Her brother died and her mother believes she is the reincarnation of said brother. This family backstory lends reason to why Lu has her walls up so high. It also begins the strong through-line of Lu searching for identity and rebelling against being someone’s substitute. More than anything though, it makes me want good things for Lu. Lu deserves romance. More than romance, Lu deserves cliche, over the top romcom spectacle romance that would make her heart sing.

The Substitute’s third act transitions to three years later where Lu is the star and Ni Ke the nobody. This third act is a little weaker than the previous two. It’s still strong and has great romantic beats, but has less plot. Ni Ke becomes the point of view character. She has a pretty insane backstory herself, but the main focus is her and Lu slowly getting back together. A lot of the third act is Lu and Ni Ki trying to dive on the sword for one another and do risky stunt choreography. It’s adorable and all, but my main takeaway from this third act was that stunt performers need stronger protection on film sets.

Even with a somewhat slow third act, The Substitute is still a great lesbian romance. It hits so many glorious, wish fulfillment moments. And it does so without becoming obnoxious cliche. There’s proper depth to the characters and a lot of care taken to make this story great. It’s also a rare example of butch for butch romance. I’m so happy this movie exists. Queer people deserve this sort of wish fulfillment, cliche romantic media. More than that, they deserve it to be good. The Substitute is here to be an entry into that all too rare club of quality queer wish fulfillment romances.

Overall rating: 6.9/10

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