Perhaps Love

Once in a long while, a story comes along and speaks accurately of my own personal sentiments regarding love.

To borrow the words of a great philosopher, my sentiment is reflected as such, "Love : a grave mental illness." Plato.

This appears to be the theme in Perhaps Love. Not that I disapprove... It's good to see a theme more grown up than the usual Cinderella and Snow White stories.

But I still found the story horribly boring. It tries to do a Moulin Rouge thing, with circus performers, tango music, a tragic actress in a love triangle, and Jacky Cheung singing the bulk of the songs.

What were they thinking? Seriously! A chinese Moulin Rouge is like... a Bollywood Superman. (For a good laugh, please click on the preceeding two links, you won't be disappointed.)

I don't know music, but I know what I like. And I liked Ewan McGregor's singing way more than a guy who made his career and created his legend from his vocals.

I don't know music, but maybe it's something to do with the rhythm and cadence of tango music that makes it completely unsuited to mandarin lyrics. None of the songs were even halfway memorable. You know who wrote better lyrics? 阿牛 wrote more memorable songs than this. But that's just me.

The story revolves around three apexes of a love triangle. A mental case director, a mental case actor, and a mental case actress. I can't see how there's any love between the characters. The director wanted a sex-buddy for his long overseas filming jobs, and got comfortable with the girl. The girl wanted a break into acting, and take grotesque pleasure in mindf***ing the actor. And the actor is just a sad case of neurotic longing.

Perhaps love has missed the point completely. And the gratuitious song and dance sequences was how Moulin Rouge would be, if it sucked and used an amateur dance troupe. The cinematography was far from inspired. Watching the dance was like looking at spilt ice-cream on the floor: something that could have been very nice if a fool hadn't dropped it but is now just a disgusting mess on the floor that you wish you didn't have to clean up.

Plotwise, the love story climaxed early (at the same time as Takeshi's character), with half an hour to go. Which gave me some hope that the story will take a more guts-ey tragic turn: someone will die, either from tuberculosis (like Nicole), or someone's fit of jealousy (a good stabbing), or an unfortunate stage accident (like an ancient TV series I watched a long time ago, 戏班). The movie needed to end on an R+J tragedy or similar to have a glimmer of redemption.

The plot tried to go in just such a direction. Yet even while I was watching the clumsy fore-play, I realised that the director was going to pull out early and leave his audience unsatisfied. Wuss.


But watching the movie was not a complete loss. I made a surprising discovery about the actress, Zhou Xun. She's the blind girl in The Emperor and the Assassin.

Watched Emperor & Assassin many years ago in the cinema. And there was one scene that captivated me: where the assassin was sent to exterminate the family of a renowned sword-smith. After the massacre, the assassin found the blind daughter of the smith, who had been listening helplessly as her parents and brothers were slaughtered. The way she gazed sightlessly into the assassin's eyes.... Those were the most hauntingly soulful eyes I've ever seen.

I bought the VCD after that just to see those eyes again.

I've tried to look for a still of that scene from the movie, but can't seem to find it. Will make a still myself later.