Review - My Lucky Star

July 10, 2014

My Lucky Star – China, 2013

Stop me if this sounds familiar. An innocent young woman meets a dashingly handsome man who’s secretly a secret agent. There’s a case involving an item that almost everyone is dying to get their hands on. The woman is seen with him and mistaken for his partner. He rescues her and takes her to a remote island in the middle of nowhere, where he teaches her a technique that can enable her to escape someone’s grasp if she ever has to. Later, there are chase scenes, a mix-up with a truth serum, and inexplicable escapes, and all the while the woman wonders aloud if he is her Mr. Right. Can you guess the movie? Given these details, many people, myself included, would have guessed Tom Cruise’s 2010 film Knight and Day, yet all of these cinematic moments can also be found in Dennie Gordon’s 2013 film My Lucky Star, starring Ziyi Zhang and Taiwanese American pop star/director/actor Leehom Wang.

In My Lucky Star, a prequel to 2009’s modestly entertaining, yet ultimately underwhelming Sophie’s Revenge, Zhang plays a young directionless woman named Sophie who works as a travel agent, but dreams of becoming a successful comic book artist. She has a rather active imagination, which makes sense given her goals in life, and a small problem distinguishing fact from fiction, a plot point dropped almost as quickly as it is brought up. In the beginning of the film, we see the story she is writing as it plays in her head, and it doesn’t take a genius to notice that the heroine in her stories bares an uncanny resemblance to herself. In the opening scene, she pictures the damsel in distress being rescued just in the nick of time by a dashing secret agent who just happens to look exactly like an agent who is assigned to retrieve a diamond that can somehow power a weapon lethal enough to destroy an entire European city. I’d love to be able to explain how it does this, but the film is intentionally vague in this department. Go figure.

Eventually the agent and the artist meet up. The agent is suave and remarkably clever, able to keep an eye on a key suspect and help Sophie retrieve belongings after they fall out of her suitcase. Also like Roy Miller in Knight and Day, he initially uses her as a cover for his covert activities, while also furnishing her with a new dress. Sound familiar? At first, Sophie is unaware of the espionage going on around her, and for good reason. After hearing all about the handsome guy she met, her friends back in Beijing have convinced her that what she needs to do is “hit that,” as if sex is the end-all cure for shyness, boredom, and unrealized dreams. All this is played for laughs of course, and it might be less offensive than it is if the jokes actually produced laughter. In addition, the film relies on some of the most disrespectful stereotypes of modern women, namely that they are slightly airheaded, unrealistic in love, and obsessed with wealth and the easy life it affords them. Sure, there are people like this, but they don’t always make the best subjects in movies.  

The film is not a complete disaster. Gordon has moments of inspired creativity, and during the most memorable of these, she adroitly cuts from live action to animation. One result of this is an almost seamless splicing of two worlds – the cute, Walt Disney-like world of cartoons, in which anything is possible, and Sophie’s much more mundane existence, in which nothing seems to be going her way. The technique gives viewers a sense of just how deep Sophie’s romantic and naïve views run, and a later in which she is asked to look at some people on a fishing boat and explain what she sees has a natural sweetness to it. Unfortunately, Gordon also displays a tendency to go overboard with fast cuts and edits which all too often stifle the casts’ attempts to fully convey their characters’ personalities. And we get over-the-top speeches that should have been toned down and cornball dialogue that even the best of actresses would have a hard time delivering convincingly.

Ziyi Zhang is a talented, versatile actress, yet as good as she is, not even she can make Sophie a believable character. As written, Sophie falls somewhere between cute and annoying, and she never appears calm or coherent enough for it to be believable that someone would fall in love with her in a matter of days. She makes unrealistic comments during dangerous situations, acts cowardly on cue, and then inexplicably develops the courage to travel halfway around the world to save the day. Luckily, she travels by map, a la the Muppets. Otherwise, she would never have made it in time.

At one point during the film a thought rushed into my head and I had to write it down. It goes like this, “What’s the point?” What’s the point of going to such great lengths to get quality talent only to give them such pitiful material to work with? At times, Zhang and Wang seem as if they are in different films. She plays most scenes as if she were in a parody of a Bond film, while he acts as if he were trying to actually play Bond. This makes it virtually impossible for the two characters to actually connect in any realistic way, and their eventual pairing comes across as forced rather than earned.

There was a time when a Ziyi Zhang movie meant something, when the mere appearance of her name on a poster or film promotion was indicative of not simply a quality performance but also a film that had the potential to challenge and delight audiences worldwide. My Lucky Star does not completely dispel this impression, but it does demonstrate just how hard it is to continue to produce such an impressive body of work. I’m still a fan, but after The Horsemen, Love for Life, Dangerous Liaisons, and now My Lucky Star, I find my faith beginning to fade. (on DVD and Blu-ray in Asia)

2 stars

*My Lucky Star is in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles.

Review - Dangerous Liaisons (2012)

March 28, 2013

Dangerous Liaisons – China, 2012

This is the third film adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses that I have seen, and it is the second best of the three, sandwiched of course between 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons and 1999’s discomforting Cruel Intentions. The former I enjoyed a great deal; the latter left me feeling extremely cold. Laclos’s novel is often seen as a critique of the decadence that existed prior to the French Revolution, and its depiction of high-class aristocrats destroying the lives of innocent people likely both shocked and mesmerized its readers. Sadly, this latest adaptation is not likely to do either.

The film is directed by South Korean Jin-ho Hur, who also made 2007’s emotionally moving film Happiness. Hur’s adaptation is set in Shanghai in 1931, and it is quite easy to see the parallels that screenwriter Geling Yan is drawing between pre-revolution France and pre-World War II China. While France’s aristocracy lived the good life at the expense of average French citizens, Shanghai’s elite, at least according to the film, carried on as if the country’s ongoing civil war and the imminent threat of Japanese aggression gave them no reason to be concerned.  In the film, they continue living in opulence and worrying about such trivial matters as marrying rich and ensuring the chastity of one’s future bride. Let the head shaking commence.

The film tells essentially the same story as the other adaptations of Laclos’s novel. Here the two villains are Mo Jieyu (adequately played by Cecilia Cheng) and Xie Yifan (South Korean actor Dong-gun Jang), and like the other incarnations, the male in this pairing conspires to woo and dump a young, unsuspecting woman. In this version, the intended victim is a widow named Du Fenyu (Ziyi Zhang), and everything about her, from her clothing to the placement of her arms, screams traditionalism. It is for this reason that Xie sets his sights on her, and he would consider her downfall an impressive personal achievement. His less-than-noble intentions morph into a wager between Mo and Xie that will eventually be the ruin of all of them. The film also features a younger woman whose mother is trying to keep her away from men until she’s married, and the young man (here an artist) who pines for her. Then there’s the film’s finale, in which violence and betrayal rear their ugly head to put a final exclamation mark on what is supposed to be a rather explosive and tragic tale.

The film misfires badly. Its first misstep is the casting of Dong-gun Jang as Xie. Jang is a talented actor, yet in this film, he is woefully miscast. While Jang is fully capable of playing a man with few moral scruples, nothing he does in this film is likely to convince the audience that Xie would win the heart of a woman like Du. When John Malkovich played this role, his character was able to feign vulnerability and lure his target closer. It felt authentic. However, Dong plays his moments with Du too aggressively. In fact, the film seems to be operating under the assumption that all a man has to do is act impulsively and be rude for a woman to fall in love with him. Also, throughout the film, Dong seems incapable of playing warm and fuzzy, and as a result, key moments when he is supposed to be confessing his true feelings only reinforce the notion that his character is nothing but a pathological liar.

The film also makes the inexcusable mistake of misusing Ziyi Zhang. Here appearing in a supporting role, Zhang is given very little to do other than look as if she is doing all she can to suppress her passion. This would be understandable if she were inexperienced in love (she isn’t) or if her pursuer were actually doing something to earn her longing (he isn’t). However, it is hard to imagine what she could like about someone whose attempts at wooing her involve grabbing a book that belonged to her deceased husband, throwing it into a swimming pool, and proclaiming that she must stop living in the past. Has he never heard of flowers and chocolate? Add to this the film’s overbearing soundtrack and its overreliance on tried-and-true cinematic devices to evoke the audience’s sympathy, such as using slow motion to extend supposedly heartbreaking scenes, and what we’re left with is a film that is simultaneously trying too hard and not putting in enough of an effort.

We’ve seen all of this before, and in truth, we’ve seen it done better. Therefore, I suggest a golden rule for films such as these. Simply put, when someone is considering remaking a film, let’s apply this simply standard before giving the remake the green light: If it is not going to be an improvement on the original (and it is not difficult to tell from a script that it won’t be), don’t make it. Just say, “I’ll pass.” Better yet. Hire the writer to produce something original, something that has authentic characters, believable dialogue, and an uncompromised ending. Believe me, the film you come up with is almost guaranteed to be better than this version of Dangerous Liaisons. (on Blu-ray in Region A)

2 and a half stars

*Dangerous Liaisons is in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles.

Review – Love for Life

February 9, 2012

Love for Life – China, 2011

Changwei Gu’s Love for Life was a difficult film for me. I say this right off the bat because I think it will be the same for many other people as well. It’s not that I felt the film was bad or that I wasn’t moved by many of its characters, but rather that I felt culturally estranged from the film at times. At several points, mental red flags went up in my brain, and I could help thinking just how wrong what I was seeing was. Case in point: a pivotal scene that is intended to show two characters coming together for the first time. I have used the word intended because from my point of view the feeling was not mutual. In the scene in question, a man named Deyi Zhao (Aaron Kwok) is sitting on top of the roof of a school next to a young woman named Qinqin Shang (Ziyi Zhang). The two of them at first engage in a bit of meaningless banter, and then they reveal a few rather personal details about their lives and their marriages. We soon realize that they indeed have a lot in common. The scene would work perfectly if it stopped there, for it would show the first stage in their eventual friendship and possible relationship. The problem is that the scene continues.

Soon Deyi, a married man with a son at home, puts forth his version of an indecent proposal, rather bluntly suggesting that the two of them become more than just friends. Qinqin, who is also married, declines his request; unfortunately, Deyi either doesn’t get the message or simple chooses to ignore it. I’m not sure anyone can watch what happens next and not see Deyi as nothing more than a brute that doesn’t know his boundaries and for whom no seems to have an entirely different meaning. However, a scene or two later, here’s the victim of his unwanted affection sneaking off to a makeshift room for a little bit of forbidden romance without a single scene between the two of them that might explain her apparent change of heart. In essence, we’re expected to now view the earlier scene in a different light. It’s not that she was unwilling, but rather that the timing was wrong. How convenient.

Other parts of the film were equally challenging but for far different reasons. In on scene, Deyi talks about missing his mother, who died ten years earlier. I expected the scene that transpired to feature Deyi talking about his mother and how much she meant to him. Instead, Qinqin chimes in and in her sweetest voice tells him that she can be his mother now. That’s not all. As his “mother,” she’ll do all the cooking and cleaning, too. Deyi can even call her mom if he wants to. And apparently, he does, for throughout the rest of the film, he actually refers to his wife as his mother. I know this is not uncommon in certain parts of the world, but there’s a difference between referring to your wife as mother in front of your children, which is what happens in 1993’s The Joy Luck Club, and calling your wife mother because you miss your actual mother. In some countries, such a remark would prompt a phone call to Dr. Phil as quickly as possible.

And yet the film’s more difficult scene has Deyi and Qinqin standing on a chair with a noose around each of their necks waiting to see which one of them blinks first. Neither one of them wants to die, we’re told. It’s just that they don’t want the other one to die first. The unsettling thing about the scene is that the people that wrote it clearly intended for it to say something beautiful about Deyi and Qinqin’s relationship. If it does, then I’m certainly the wrong audience for the scene, for all that went through my head was the thought that I was being emotionally manipulated. In addition, the film’s choice of a narrator may leave some people feeling uneasy, yet if you accept the film’s premise that there is an afterlife, it becomes a little easier to swallow.

Having said all the reasons why the film made me uneasy, let me now explain what I admired about the film. The film takes viewers to a village that is just awakening to the horrors of the AIDS pandemic. From the film’s opening scene to its final one, viewers witness a story very reminiscent of the kind that played out in many parts of the world in the early 1980’s, when the mere mention of AIDS was enough to make people flee in terror. In Love for Life, we see this scenario play out in the late 1990’s, after many villagers became infected with HIV after donating blood and then having it put back into them. The film shows us villagers not infected with the virus turning and running away when they see them, as well as deliverymen dropping their packages a distance away and driving off as quickly as they can. One merchant uses a retractable claw to return people’s change, fearing that even the slightest touch will result in the disease spreading to him. I remember when people thought this way in the 1980’s, and it’s still incredibly tough to watch.

The film juxtaposes moral responsibility with moral bankruptcy in the same family. In one of the film’s opening scenes, we witness an elderly man ask for forgiveness from those he has probably known all his life. It was his son Qiquan who caused the village to become infected. And if that were not traumatic enough, we soon learn that the elderly man is doubly cursed, for his younger son is one of those infected with HIV. The only thing he can think to do is offer to take those people infected with the disease up to the school he runs. There, away from the residents that fear the air they breathe, he says he’ll take care of them. This is indeed an admirable man, and the scenes with him in them are some of the best in the film.

If you haven’t guessed it yet, the elderly man’s younger son is Deyi, and it is at his father’s school that Deyi meets Qinqin, who has also contracted HIV. Earlier I outlined my difficulty with certain aspects of their story, yet I should also mention that their relationship eventually makes sense, and there is even a beauty to it that is quite refreshing. Watch Qinqin’s expression as she reads an important announcement over and over again towards the end of the film. It’s clear just how deeply she loves him and just how much making the announcement means to her.

Unfortunately, Love for Life misses as often as it connects. For every heartfelt, believable moment, there’s one that is likely either to cause discomfort or make you shake your head at its unwise attempts at comic relief. There’s nothing wrong with adding levity to a serious situation, but there’s nothing funny about a man scaring away neighbors by asking them if they want his disease. When real people say such things, it’s often a survival technique, something they do to reassure themselves that they still have some control over their environment. It’s not material for a comedy – at least not the way it is presented here. However, the film eventually won me over. Ziyi Zhang gives a decent performance, and Aaron Kwok is good enough to rise above some questionable screenwriting decisions. I also appreciated the sensitivity with which director Changwei Gu approaches the film’s characters and his handling of the residents who are not infected. They could easily have been presented as uncaring monsters; here, they’re people who just don’t know enough to act any differently. I’m sure we’ve all known people like that. In the end, Love for Life is watchable, but I suspect many people will view it as a missed opportunity. (on Blu-ray in Region A)

2 and a half stars

*Love for Life is in Mandarin with English subtitles.