Still playing catch-up with my A Little TLC(w) reviews, so I’m dealing with another movie that I watched a while back. Since it’s one that evidently didn’t make a super lasting impression on me, this write-up won’t be as thorough as I’d like it to be.
Good friends Wai and Patrick are both ad executives at the same firm, but while their career situations are similar, their experiences with love are quite opposite. Wai has a bad habit of falling in love with whatever model he’s adopted as his latest print-ad muse, and it seems they always wind up leaving him as soon as they hit it big. Patrick, on the other hand, is a player who regularly cheats on his girlfriend and wheedles Wai into covering for him. The film sees both men being thrown for a loop by the unexpected curve balls love throws their way.
Lots of rom-com tropes in this one. Wai falls for one of his models yet again, but this time, it’s a beautiful nobody he discovers by accident, and she’s winning and innocent and Manic Pixie Dream Girl-ish, but his past heartbreaks get in the way of any relationship they might pursue. And things are further complicated by Vivian, the new boss; she’s widely rumored to be a lesbian, but Wai is getting a lot of conflicted signals that he’s not sure what to do with. Meanwhile, Patrick jumps from woman to woman and takes his girlfriend for granted, and all the while his coworker Mei, who has a much clearer idea of what kind of guy he is, pines for him in spite of it. She quietly attends to his needs and hopes that one day he’ll finally notice.
It’s all very standard, and despite some wild farcical turns, things mostly end up how you expect it all to go. It has its cringey moments (the whole “is-it-or-isn’t-it-sexual?” back-and-forth between Wai and Vivian in the workplace feels the most obviously dated, along with Patrick overtly sexualizing Vivian – who is, again, their boss – even as he reinforces rumors about her being gay,) but it’s a decent, albeit problematic, example of the genre and still has its charms. There are a few places where the movie goes for the more thoughtful/less predictable choice, and those are the moments I love it best. Some good performances too, especially from Ada Choi as Vivian and Suki Kwan as Mei.
Anyone who’s seen a Wong Kar-wai film knows that Tony Leung Chiu-wai can play heartsick, and he certainly delivers that here as Wai. This is a nice performance from Leung – a lot of his comic roles, while fun and undeniably charming, stay within a narrower range, but this film pulls his character in a few different directions. Wai might be a lovelorn romantic, but old heartbreaks have made him a little guarded and cynical, which causes him to resist his feelings for his new muse Yu when she comes along, putting up boundaries between them while simultaneously wanting to keep her from any other guy. And some of his scenes with Vivian are a lot broader, veering into sexual farce at times as Wai is sent spinning trying to even figure out what’s going on between them.
Recommend?
In General – Maybe. For its type, it’s fun. Light and fluffy, enjoyable enough if you’re in the mood for it and are unaware of some of the more tasteless humor going in.
Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Another maybe. I’d put this around the mid-range for Leung’s comedies. Not his best work, but still engaging.
Warnings
Sexual
content, drinking/smoking, language, and some homophobic jokes.
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