Thursday, January 5, 2017

A Little TLC(w): Timeless Romance (1998)

I haven’t quite made up my mind where this strange little film stands as far as good or bad is concerned.  One thing I know for sure – it’s out there.  Of the Tony Leung Chiu-wai comedies I’ve seen thus far, this romantic fantasy comedy is definitely my favorite.  It doesn’t have the cheesy paint-by-numbers plot of Love Me, Love My Money, and it isn’t spectacle-over-substance like The Banquet.  It’s a wildly ambitious film that, in my opinion, doesn’t always succeed at what it’s doing, but it’s very watchable from start to finish (a few spoilers – too hard to talk about the film without them.)

Lau Yat Lo is a young police officer who, if not unlucky, has certainly been uninspired in love.  He can’t say he’s ever truly made a connection with someone, but all that changes when he receives a mysterious phone call warning him that “the girl who committed suicide” must not die.  This sends him careening into a complicated set of circumstances involving a pair of low-level gangsters, an aspiring actress, an out-of-body experience, and a mentally-unstable man claiming to be none other than Sun Quan, one of the legendary figures from the Three Kingdoms period (the character played by Chang Chen in Red Cliff.)  Before it’s all said and done, the film has contemplated violence, love, madness, spirituality, and magic.

It’s a little “throw everything to the wall and see what sticks,” and it definitely makes for a singular viewing experience; I can’t say that I’ve seen anything like this before.  It doesn’t all hold together – some of the drama feels unnecessarily ratcheted-up, and some of the humor is really tasteless (espectially a few unseemly rape jokes and some tired gay panic) – but there’s a lot going on here that’s pretty neat.  The idea of missing one’s chance at love gets really interesting when you take rebirth into account, I love Lau Yat Lo’s creative approach to the police department’s standoff with “Sun Quan,” and I like when things go really off the deep end in the second half.  And, although the romance gets surprisingly-little screentime, the connection between Lau Yat Lo and the fragile Shu Kwan is really lovely.

Leung plays the lead, Lau Yat Lo.  It’s one of several cops I’ve seen him play, and not the first lovestruck one, either.  I think he does a nice job keeping the different threads of the character together.  After his near-death meeting with Shu Kwan, I totally buy that his entire world has tilted on its axis and he’s still trying to come to grips with it.  He makes for an astute, creative officer who’s not afraid to do something a little crazy in order to resolve a situation peacefully, and he mostly keep his head under truly outrageous circumstances.

Thanks to the more fantastical elements of the film, that’s not the only role we get.  Although Leung just plays the one character, Lau Yat Lo himself put on an act over the course of the film.  In order to approach Sun Quan, he plays the role of another Three Kingdoms figure, Zhuge Liang (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro in Red Cliff.)  At first, it’s just a ruse to try and talk Sun Quan  down, but a bizarre occurrence winds up blasting many of the characters into the past, where they inhabit the bodies of these heroes of old as they frantically attempt to get home.  After having seen Leung play Zhou Yu in Red Cliff, it’s fun to see him taking on the role that’s the yin to Zhou Yu’s yang, even if his Zhuge Liang is still mostly mixed with Lau Yat Lo’s personality (it would’ve been even more amusing for me if Shu Kwan had shown up in Zhou Yu’s body instead of Lü Meng, another general from that period that I don’t believe Red Cliff included.)

Recommend?

In General – Possibly.  It’s very flawed but undeniably interesting.  If you’re familiar with the Three Kingdoms period, you might get a kick out of the winking send-up the film does of that era.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Maybe.  While not especially demanding, this is still an enjoyable role and Leung plays it well.  And even when the film is so-so, Leung’s romance game is always on point.

Warnings

Violence (including rape and suicide,) swearing, some tasteless jokes, and thematic elements.

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