It’s hard
to say exactly how much this “counts” as a Wong Kar-wai film. While Wong is credited with adapting the
short story it’s based on, he isn’t directing it (that would be Jiajia Zhang,
the original short story writer, in his directorial debut.) As such, there are a lot of Wong Kar-wai-ish
things going on within the movie – not sure how much of that is from the
original story and how much is just Wong doing his thing – but the overall look
and feel of the film doesn’t really match Wong’s typical vibe.
Chen Mo
and his friend Guan Chan are co-owners of the See You Tomorrow bar in Hong
Kong. Chen Mo is also a self-described
“ferryman,” someone who helps those around him navigate the uncertain waters of
love. The people in need of his help
include Guan Chan, who’s desperately in love with his amnesiac chef
ex-girlfriend, and Xiao Yu, a ferryman-in-training who’s carrying a torch for a
washed-up rocker. Lots of heartache,
lots of drinking, and lots of whimsical solutions to dealing with love woes.
All sorts
of Wong-esque stuff going on here. Chen
Mo has actual heart palapitations whenever he hears a song that reminds him of
his former lover, food and love are all jumbled together, and plenty of
characters have very particular, neurotic ways of either getting closer to the
one they love or keeping them at arm’s length.
Narratively, it’s perhaps a cousin of Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, at least on the romance angle.
Surprisingly, though, I was also reminded a lot of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s
work. I wouldn’t have thought those two
filmmakers were all that similar, but even though their movies tend to be very
different in tone and feel, this movie made me realize that they’re alike in
the way so many of their characters are melancholy and/or shy romantics with
odd obsessive quirks.
It’s that
tone and feel which finally makes me see the parallels with Jeunet, which is
probably why I didn’t see it before.
Even Wong’s lightest films (again, probably Chungking Express) have this really lonely quality to them, and his
method of making movies achieves a unique atmosphere that feels highly stylized
and quietly raw at the same time. His
films meander, and the story is unearthed amid long scenes that can feel like
nothing’s happening, but really, they’re drawing the map to understand the
characters and the relationships between them.
But
ultimately, this isn’t a full-fledged Wong Kar-wai movie. Under Zhang’s direction, the film is
simultaneously slick and frenetic, constantly moving with eye-popping
colors. It’s not exactly Jeunet’s
aesthetic, but it’s a good deal closer to it, which brings out the similar
narrative quirks in the story. The
direction here is messier than a Jeunet film, but it’s not Wong’s intentional,
understated kind of messy, either. It’s
messy like a first-time director who has big ideas and isn’t always sure how to
make them all fit together. That said,
despite feeling a little reductive, the film is still fairly compelling and
kept my attention well. The kinds of
love stories we see going on here are the kinds I love. I especially enjoy an extended flashback
showing why Xiao Yu is still so hung up on this fading rock star that everyone
else has written off.
Takeshi
Kaneshiro also appears in the movie as Guan Chan (another Kaneshiro character
in a Wong-adjacent movie whose heartbreak is tied up in food, a la Chungking Express.) I’m not familiar with Angelababy, Eason Chan,
or Sandrine Pinna, but all three of them are very engaging as Xiao Yu, her rock
star, and Guan Chan’s ex.
All this,
and I still haven’t gotten to Tony Leung Chiu-wai yet! As Chen Mo, Leung gets the job done as a
cynical romantic who throws himself into other people’s problems to avoid
thinking about his own. Part wing man,
part master consoler, part spirit guide, Chen Mo brings a steadiness to the
proceedings; even when the film is at its most frantic, Chen Mo included,
there’s still something grounding about him.
From
about 2046 on, Leung’s output has
slowed down quite a bit, so it always sort of stands out to be to see one of
his recent films. He’s still got it, of
course – think of his magnetically-understated performances in Red Cliff or The Grandmaster, or even the silly fun he adds to Monster Hunt 2 – but while he’s good in
this movie, there’s nothing really noteworthy about it for me. It reminds me more of something like The Great Magician, although without the
dubbing. While I wouldn’t say he phones
either performance in, there’s something just a little distant about both. Leung is equally adept at being both kinetic
and still, but here, there’s a slight distraction to the energy and the
stillness doesn’t quite have the electricity in it that I’ve seen from him
before.
Recommend?
In
General
– I think so. While the film could’ve
used either an extra polish or more intentionality in its messiness, I still
enjoyed it a lot and got sucked into the characters and their troubles.
Tony
Leung Chiu-wai
– Maybe. As long as the movie is at
least decent, you can never really go wrong with Leung, but while this
performance is nice, I wouldn’t rate it an absolute must-see.
Warnings
Inhuman
amounts of drinking, smoking, some violence, and language.
No comments:
Post a Comment