Yan Shouyi is a TV host who has an affair with Wu Yue (Fan Bingbing), a young and attractive woman working in publishing. Yan diligently erases all text messages and call records between him and Wu on his cellphone before he gets home everyday, in order to avoid detection by his wife Yu Wenjuan (Lu Zhang). One night, after telling Yu that he has a work meeting with Fei Mo (Zhang Guoli), a TV producer and Yan's superior, Yan rendezvous with Wu and switches off his cellphone. Not being able to reach Yan a while later, Yu calls Fei, who has been in the know of Yan's affair.
Cell Phone (simplified Chinese: 手机; traditional Chinese: 手機; pinyin: shŏujī) is an award-winning Chinese comedy-drama film directed by Feng Xiaogang and starring Ge You, Zhang Guoli, Xu Fan and Fan Bingbing. It was first released on 18 December 2003 in Mainland China and was subsequently screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival on 18 March 2005. With box office earnings of over ¥50 million, Cell Phone became the best-selling domestic film in 2003.
Written by Liu Zhenyun, based on his own novel of the same title, the film revolves around two successful men whose marriages were wrecked when their wives uncovered their extramarital affairs through traces left in their cellphones. More broadly, the film explores the role of cellphones in interpersonal relationships in modern China, where the rapid development in information technology is having huge impacts on the way people communicate.
