Perhaps Love: Most Definitely
I am in love. Madly, passionately, crazily. The object of this affection? Perhaps Love, a 2005 Chinese movie musical starring Takeshi Kaneshiro (does this man just get hotter with each movie I see him in, or what? And he can sing as well? Seriously, he must run over small children or something to counterbalance the wonderfulness), as well as Xun Zhou and Jackie Cheung. koalathebear, I am definitely in your debt, as I wouldn't have heard of the movie if it wasn't for your lj entry a few months back (though I know you didn't like it as much as I do).
This is an amazing movie: reminding me of older French movies like "A Man and a Woman," or "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," a musical fantasmagoria that makes Moulin Rouge unsubtle and shrill, and well, itself. The story jumps between three different timelines, points of view of multiple characters, and a whole lot of emotional baggage, but incredibly, it works. I found it like poetry in motion, and visually stunning, and (which is an odd thing for a movie that deals with finiteness of love) one of the most romantic movies I've ever seen.
The plot: A director, Nie Wen (Cheung) is filming a musical (all the musical numbers in the movie are in a context of this). His star, and arguably his muse (and his lover) is Sun Na (Xun Zhou), a beautiful and very ambitious actress. His leading man is Lin Jian-Dong (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a famous HK actor, who takes on the role because 10 years ago, when they were both unknown and penniless, he and Sun Na had a destructive, passionate affair that ended badly and he's never been able to let go of it. The plot of the musical, in fantastic ways, parallels the real story as is happening, as the plot of the movie involves a circus girl who forgets her partner (amnesia, spell, I am not sure?) and takes up with a circus director instead, who manufactured beautiful memories for her.
The thing that I love the most are the characters and their interactions. Takeshi's character is my favorite, and not just because I am biased. He is someone who has never been able to get closure, and in some ways, he is stuck in the past, half-asleep in the time loop. Nie, the director, is an intelligent, creative man who is afraid he is losing both his art and his muse and faces up to it with a great deal of maturity. And Sun Na? I know koalathebear didn't like her, but I do. Or at least I can understand where she is coming from: she loved Lin. Loved him as much as she was capable of. But she loved having a career, being a star, doing anything necessary, more. And both she and Lin are haunted by this failure. He feels too much, he can't move forward. She can't move forward because she denies it ever existed. She is a clever woman, a strong woman, not a nice woman, probably. But not a horrible careerist bitch or whatever the cliche. She was someone who knew what she wanted and was prepared to pay the price for it, and did.
And then there are the visuals. The editing is amazing, intercutting between three storylines (the lovers' past, their present and the movie within a movie story, within seconds of each other, one of the stories used as an accent in the other). There is a continual imagery of snow, imagery of ice, and water, and pools (Takeshi wanders in the hotel pool in his coat, and it is later explained why, but even before that, it makes for a freaking cool visual). There is the glittering shadows of the circus. And there are some of the most romantic images I've seen in a while: Sun Na swimming in the pool, underwater, and Lin diving in and kissing her, underwater, and she both struggles and pulls him closer, and it's the hottest thing I've seen in a while. And then there is the memory of his holding her on the ice, 10 years ago, which fades into the image on the screen: their movie characters holding each other in almost identical positions, and paralleling the present-day characters holding each other in front of this screen. Oh, and the final scene with Nie Wen and Sun Na and the trapeze, or the scene when Lin comes to find Sun Na after he left her in Beijing (I am trying to be non-spoilery here).
It's beautiful. And grown-up, and wistful (because you can't recapture what you had, no matter how you try, not really), and yet hopeful at the same time. And it's cheap on ebay (it hasn't been released in the States, though I hope will be some time). Go get it.
This is an amazing movie: reminding me of older French movies like "A Man and a Woman," or "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," a musical fantasmagoria that makes Moulin Rouge unsubtle and shrill, and well, itself. The story jumps between three different timelines, points of view of multiple characters, and a whole lot of emotional baggage, but incredibly, it works. I found it like poetry in motion, and visually stunning, and (which is an odd thing for a movie that deals with finiteness of love) one of the most romantic movies I've ever seen.
The plot: A director, Nie Wen (Cheung) is filming a musical (all the musical numbers in the movie are in a context of this). His star, and arguably his muse (and his lover) is Sun Na (Xun Zhou), a beautiful and very ambitious actress. His leading man is Lin Jian-Dong (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a famous HK actor, who takes on the role because 10 years ago, when they were both unknown and penniless, he and Sun Na had a destructive, passionate affair that ended badly and he's never been able to let go of it. The plot of the musical, in fantastic ways, parallels the real story as is happening, as the plot of the movie involves a circus girl who forgets her partner (amnesia, spell, I am not sure?) and takes up with a circus director instead, who manufactured beautiful memories for her.
The thing that I love the most are the characters and their interactions. Takeshi's character is my favorite, and not just because I am biased. He is someone who has never been able to get closure, and in some ways, he is stuck in the past, half-asleep in the time loop. Nie, the director, is an intelligent, creative man who is afraid he is losing both his art and his muse and faces up to it with a great deal of maturity. And Sun Na? I know koalathebear didn't like her, but I do. Or at least I can understand where she is coming from: she loved Lin. Loved him as much as she was capable of. But she loved having a career, being a star, doing anything necessary, more. And both she and Lin are haunted by this failure. He feels too much, he can't move forward. She can't move forward because she denies it ever existed. She is a clever woman, a strong woman, not a nice woman, probably. But not a horrible careerist bitch or whatever the cliche. She was someone who knew what she wanted and was prepared to pay the price for it, and did.
And then there are the visuals. The editing is amazing, intercutting between three storylines (the lovers' past, their present and the movie within a movie story, within seconds of each other, one of the stories used as an accent in the other). There is a continual imagery of snow, imagery of ice, and water, and pools (Takeshi wanders in the hotel pool in his coat, and it is later explained why, but even before that, it makes for a freaking cool visual). There is the glittering shadows of the circus. And there are some of the most romantic images I've seen in a while: Sun Na swimming in the pool, underwater, and Lin diving in and kissing her, underwater, and she both struggles and pulls him closer, and it's the hottest thing I've seen in a while. And then there is the memory of his holding her on the ice, 10 years ago, which fades into the image on the screen: their movie characters holding each other in almost identical positions, and paralleling the present-day characters holding each other in front of this screen. Oh, and the final scene with Nie Wen and Sun Na and the trapeze, or the scene when Lin comes to find Sun Na after he left her in Beijing (I am trying to be non-spoilery here).
It's beautiful. And grown-up, and wistful (because you can't recapture what you had, no matter how you try, not really), and yet hopeful at the same time. And it's cheap on ebay (it hasn't been released in the States, though I hope will be some time). Go get it.