*Premise spoilers.*
I actually saw this movie years ago, during my first foray into Tony Leung Chiu-wai movies. This was back in the Netflix-DVDs-in-the-mail days, and once I got through the Wong Kar-wai stuff, I started poking around at what else Netflix had available. There was Hard Boiled, for instance, and my thoughts on that are well-documented. There’s also this film, which, while problematic, isn’t all that bad but is definitely not Hero, Happy Together, or Hard Boiled. Watching it again, I was reminded of the things I liked about it while also remembering its not-so-great parts.
Yeuk, a sweet blind woman, is in for quite the experience when she does a good deed for a benevolent sprite who returns the favor in an unexpected way. Namely, he puts the kind but lonely young woman into the path of Ming, a purported matchmaker. Ming’s business turns out to be a con, but the two begin to get along despite themselves. When Ming is suddenly struck blind himself (which may also be due to a bit of supernatural nudging,) Yeuk is the only one who can cut through his fear and stubbornness to help him. Meanwhile, a misaddressed Christmas card ends up sending a lovesick office worker to Shanghai in search of a young woman who’s as unlucky in love as he is.
We’ll start with the Shanghai stuff, just to get it out of the way. It’s cute and sweet, and Chang Chen, who I always enjoy, plays the office worker Cheng. But it has zero connection to the main story and feels a little tacked-on, like the Yeuk/Ming plot didn’t have enough material to fill a whole film and this side-story was invented to bulk up the runtime. Now, Chungking Express has two basically-unconnected stories and I love that, but while this film might be trying to emulate Chungking Express with the Shanghai story, it’s not substantial enough to counterbalance the Yeuk/Ming stuff.
Back to the main plot. Again, cute and sweet, and probably well-meaning. Once Ming loses his sight, Yeuk attempts to take him under her wing and teach him the tools he needs to move through society. We see a resource center for the blind with orientation and mobility training, practical tricks like distinguishing between shampoo and conditioner by placing different numbers of rubber bands around the bottles, and helpfu tools like a watch that can be read tactilely. But of course, neither Miriam Yeung, who plays Yeuk, or Leung, who plays Ming, are blind. Leung is in a bit of a Riz-Ahmed-in-Sound-of-Metal situation (and I have feelings on that,) in that Ming has only just lost his sight, so that’s a bit trickier, but it’s hard to enjoy Yeung’s admittedly-endearing performance when she’s also groping around everywhere. Yeuk may know more about being blind than Ming does and have more resources, but with the way Yeung plays her, she doesn’t have any more confidence moving around the city than he does.
Which brings us to Leung as Ming. I won’t delve any more into whether or not he should have taken this role, as I’ve already covered that in the three earlier films I’ve reviewed where he played characters with a vision loss. Again, Ming has just lost his sight, so groping around and being overwhelmed is within reason for him. But I don’t like the way that Ming, who in the first part of the film is very expressive, almost immediately goes blank when he loses his sight. I feel like he would just naturally continue to emote with his face, and the performance definitely loses something because of that. Leung tells us so much about a character through his nonverbals, but here, it feels like he’s holding himself back.
And that’s a shame, because when Ming is on, he’s quite an enjoyable character. He’s a bit of a callback to Leung’s many charming-schemer roles, though not quite as good at it as some of his ‘90s counterparts. I really like the scenes of him first getting to know Yeuk; he initially assumes it’ll be easy to give her the runaround, as he does with all of his clients, but she surprises him and he sort of stumbles into being more genuine than he intended. (Side note: if Yeuk were played by a blind actress, I could definitely get behind a version of the film that was just about a clever/kind blind woman and a slightly-floundering con man unexpectedly falling in love, without the angle of Ming going blind himself.)
And once we do get to the “sudden blindness” plot, some of the scenes are very well-acted. I especially like Leung’s performance when Ming first wakes up unable to see, with sleepy confusion quickly sliding into frenzied panic and then buried in a hasty mask of indifference. My favorite part about this character is the way Ming puts on a show of being completely all right. He’s not upset or scared, oh no, not him, and he doesn’t need anybody’s help—practical, emotional, or otherwise. Because Leung is relying less on his facial expressions here, these cracks in Ming’s indifferent façade come through in other ways, subtle choices in his pacing or his breath.
Honestly, it’s probably a better performance than you’d really need in a film like this, a sweet but somewhat-forgettable Christmas romance that piles on the cheese and depends heavily on the chemistry and charisma of the leads. However, the representation aspects of it, and the mere fact that this is the fourth time I’ve reviewed Leung playing blind/low-vision in a film, make it a little harder to appreciate its good points.
Recommend?
In General – Not really. As a movie, it’s fine, but not good enough to make me recommend it in spite of the problematic representation.
Tony Leung Chiu-wai – A cautious maybe. While far from Leung’s best, it’s still a good performance with more going on than it might see initially. Still, if you’re going to watch one of Leung’s “blind” performances, Ashes of Time is much more worth your while.
Warnings
A little violence, suggestiveness, and ablebodied actors playing characters with disabilities.
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