Domestic audiences look for quality romances in Valentine's season

Spending Valentine's Day with the one you love to watch a romance blockbuster sounds like a sweet idea. However, it can also create a difficult choice.

Last week, Valentines' Day – also deemed the first box office season following the fiercely contested Spring Festival holiday – grossed 527 million yuan ($83.2 million), propelled by three new romances according to movie information tracker Beacon.

Ten Years of Loving You, adapted from a popular online novel with the same title, sat on the top of the country's box office charts for romance movies on Valentine's Day, followed by the fantasy film 0.1% World. The third-highest romance is Don't Forget I Love You, marking the third cooperation between actress Gulnazar and actor Jasper Liu.

Valentine's Day became a prime box-office season and draw for new films roughly 10 years ago, with the blockbuster Beijing Love Story ushering in the trend.

Over the past decade, nearly 30 new movies have been released particularly for Valentine's Day, but most have received mixed reviews, according to domestic media reports.

Despite grossing a sizable amount of box office, the three new movies released on this year's Valentine's Day have also received mixed reviews, making a lot of theatergoers yearn for more quality works in the post-Spring Festival period, usually a relatively bleak period for big-budget movies.

With nine new movies opening this week, two imported romance films, We Made a Beautiful Bouquet from Japan and A Rainy Day in New York from the United States, are estimated to attract audiences interested in the genre of romance, as both have accumulated word of mouth praise online, some industry analysts said.