''The 601st Phone Call'' () is a 2006 Chinese

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by

Zhang Guoli Zhang Guoli (born 17 January 1955) is a Chinese actor and film director who was a ''xiangsheng'' actor before he started working on films and television series. He is mostly known for his roles playing the Emperor in various dramas involving Qin ...

and written by Zou Jingzhi. It was released in

mainland China "Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...

on August 18, 2006.

Plot

A young woman named Yishu believes she has no luck at all and she blames her name for it. One day she starts receiving phone calls from people thinking that she is the popular singer Tianyou. It turns out that someone has leaked 600 phone numbers of famous people to the internet and Yishu's phone number got mixed up in the bunch. While Yishu finds it annoying at first, she soon receives a text message from Xiaowen, who is the singer in an amateur rock band. He wishes to write a song for Tianyou and wants Yishu - who he thinks is Tianyou's assistant - to deliver the song to Tianyou. Tianyou is a popular singer, but hasn't had a hit number lately. While she wants to sing for the sake of art, her cruel agent cares only for money and pressures her into recording an album she does not want to record because it doesn't contain any good songs. This decision gets her into a lot of trouble and she is attacked, furthering her personal depression. While Yishu hears more of Xiaowen's song through their phone calls and text messages, Yishu is distracted from the problems she attributes to her bad luck. However, Xiaowen conceals the fact he is dying from a terminal illness, thus his desperation to finish his song and have it delivered to Tianyou. Meanwhile, Tianyou has lost interest in singing, since none of the songs she has been forced to record mean anything to her, and she contemplates suicide, a path that her agent secretly delights in because it will mean her unreleased record will sell-out after her death. On the night that Tianyou is about to commit suicide, Xiaowen calls her cellphone from his hospital bed, having received the correct phone number from Yishu's efforts to find it, and sings her his song. Tianyou is inspired to continue and her career is revitalized; at her next concert, she dedicates the song Xiaowen has written to him and thanks him for saving her before singing it. Tianyou sends Yishu tickets to her concert, for one each for Yishu and Xiaowen, and Yishu invites Xiaowen, hoping to finally meet him. However, at the end of the concert, she finds Xiaowen's bandmates and learns from them that Xiaowen has already died.

Cast

* Bibi Zhou as Yi Shu *

Cecilia Cheung Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi ( zh, 張栢芝; born 24 May 1980) is a Hong Kong actress and singer. Cheung is considered a " Sing girl"—an actress who first received media attention through starring alongside Stephen Chow, and later went on to her ...

as Tianyou *

Hu Ge Hu Ge ( zh, c=胡歌, born 20 September 1982), also known as Hugh Hu or Hugo Hu, is a Chinese actor and singer. He rose to fame for his role as Li Xiaoyao in '' Chinese Paladin'' (2005), and has since starred in a succession of popular televi ...

as Xiaowen *

Niu Ben Zhang Xuejing (张学景; born 1935), stagename Niu Ben (牛犇) is a Chinese film actor. Biography He lost both of his parents at the age of six, then lived with his oldest brother, who worked as a driver at the third film factory in Beijing. ...

as Old Man Li *

as Chairman of the Board * Zhang Meng as He Ling * Wei Zongwan * Liu Yiwei * Guo Degang

References

External links

*
''The 601st Phone Call''
at Cinemasie 2006 films 2006 drama films 2000s Mandarin-language films Chinese drama films 2000s Chinese films Tangren Media films Films with screenplays by Zou Jingzhi {{2000s-China-film-stub