The Allure of Tears
倾城之泪
China, 2011, colour, 2.35:1, 110 mins.
Director: Huang Zhenzhen 黄真真 [Barbara Wong].
Rating: 3/10.
Embarrassingly arch collection of love stories that slightly improves later on.
STORY
Shanghai, the present day. I: The First Teardrop 第一滴泪. A young woman, nicknamed Awesome Girl 给力妹 (Zhou Dongyu), returns to a Shanghai private hospital for treatment for leukaemia. There she meets fellow patient You Le (Li Zhiting), a spoiled kid from a rich family, who has a brain tumour but is resisting his parents’ insistence on him having an operation. The two fall in love, and look forward to dying together. But then Awesome Girl tells You Le she is going to Beijing, where a compatible bone-marrow donor has been found. II: The Second Teardrop 第二滴泪. The Shanghai music school in which Awesome Girl once studied piano is faced with foreclosure by its bank, unless it can raise RMB3 million in the next two months. The school head (Chen Guoxin) asks former pupil Ding Dake (Ren Xianqi) to persuade star violinist Yang Lin (Liang Yongqi), for whom he always had a secret passion, to hold a comeback concert to raise funds. Ding Dake discovers the reason Yang Lin retired is because she is partially deaf from an accident on stage. She finally agrees to help, but then more obstacles emerge towards putting on the concert. III: The Third Teardrop 第三滴泪. In the queue for Yang Lin’s autograph after the concert is a young woman, Zhang Cai (Chen Qiao’en), who is about to receive a surprise from a young man, Chen Sheng (Dou Xiao). The two first met in the rain in a town in Jiangsu province, where she was a street-seller. After moving in together, and trying to save money to realise a shared dream, they lost everything when Chen Sheng crashed his work van. Zhang Cai gave him three years to sort his life out, so he took the coach to Shanghai in search of a career.
REVIEW
Just when she seemed to have finally got all her ducks in the right order with the classy rom-com Perfect Wedding 抱抱俏佳人, everything comes crashing down again in the career of Hong Kong director Huang Zhenzhen 黄真真 [Barbara Wong] with The Allure of Tears 倾城之泪. Huang’s first film in China and with Mainland financing, this anthology of three love stories – only tangentially connected – is so utterly inept at a script level for most of its length that it almost seems as if Huang is making a parody of Asian melodrama conventions. (Alas, she is not.) After two squirmingly arch episodes, things improve at the 70-minute mark with the final segment – a standard love story lifted by the chemistry between Taiwan singer-presenter-TV actress Chen Qiao’en 陈乔恩 and Chinese Canadian Dou Xiao 窦骁 [Shawn Dou] – but hardly enough to justify the whole movie’s almost two-hour running-time.
Death – as well as some unspeakable dialogue – hangs heavy over the first tale, a meet-cute romance between two young cancer patients in a Shanghai private hospital. Huang and her co-writers (including her regular partner, actor-producer Zheng Danrui 郑丹瑞 [Lawrence Cheng]) recycle every cliche of the genre without any true emotion. The 40-minute segment is watchable only for young Mainland actress Zhou Dongyu 周冬雨 (Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂树之恋, 2010), whose naive freshness is the only genuine thing on screen; Hong Kong actor-singer Li Zhiting 李治廷 [Aarif Lee], who shot to screen fame with Echoes of the Rainbow 岁月神偷 (2009), simply goes through the charm motions as a spoiled rich kid.
Things don’t get any better in the 30-minute central segment, a love story-cum-putting on a concert tale with Hong Kong’s Liang Yongqi 梁咏琪 [Gigi Leung] getting the unspeakable lines this time round, as a hearing-impaired violinist. Taiwan’s Ren Xianqi 任贤齐 [Richie Ren], in goofy glasses, looks puzzled, while the rest of the mixed Hong Kong, Mainland and Taiwan cast look equally out of place as classical musicians. The 35-minute closing tale benefits from a much more realist tone, a likable performance by the smiley Dou (Zhou’s co-star in Hawthorn Tree) and Chen’s no-nonsense, very Taiwan playing of his partner.
After the clean, polished surfaces of the first two stories, the widescreen photography by Taiwan fashion-musicvideo photographer Yu Jingping 余静萍 (Ming Ming 明明, 2006; In Case of Love 街角的小王子, 2010) switches style for the final part, with much more handheld work and more saturated colours. The abrupt change seems symptomatic of the whole project’s confusion.
CREDITS
Presented by Fujian Hengye Film Distribution (CN), Cayie Movie & Video Communication (CN), Shanghai Seven Film Media (CN).
Script: Zheng Danrui [Lawrence Cheng], Huang Zhenzhen [Barbara Wong], Hou Yingheng, Zheng Shanyu. Photography: Yu Jingping. Editing: Kwang Zhiliang, Huang Hai. Music: Zhao Zengxi [Chiu Tsang-hei]. Violin solos: Yao Jue. Art direction: Yu Xinghua. Styling: Yu Jia’an [Bruce Yu]. Costume design: Fu Ting. Sound: He Yuan, Liu Zhuilian. Musical consultant (for II): Yao Jue.
Cast: I: Zhou Dongyu (Awesome Girl/Power Girl), Li Zhiting [Aarif Lee] (You Le), Chen Guoxin (music school head), Yang Jiahua, Guo Yujia, Li Shangxuan, Liu Yuqi, Zhou Shaodong, Wu Yufang, Cao Shiping, Xu Caigang, Xu Shouqing, Hu Jiande, Guo Qiang, Dong Shuai, Peng Guang, Wang Tao, Li Gongjian. II: Liang Yongqi [Gigi Leung] (Yang Lin), Ren Xianqi [Richie Ren] (Ding Dake), Chen Guoxin (music school head), Zheng Danrui [Lawrence Cheng] (Xiao Dan, the clarinettist), Rong Xiang (Lin Yifeng, the timpanist), Li Baoer (Chen Lisheng, the French horn player), Yao Jue (herself, the violinist), Yang Xiaodan (Lu Hua, the flautist), Lu Qi, Lin Keren [Gus Liem], Yang Zhiying, Sun Lufei, Long De, Xia Yongxiang, Li Ruimin, Zhu Feng, Yuan Shuocheng, Li Qiang, Wu Yongjin, Duan Qianru, A Ya, Wang Yaqin, Zhang Wenjun. III: Chen Qiao’en (Zhang Cai), Dou Xiao [Shawn Dou] (Chen Sheng), Cheng Xuming, Yan Tinghu, Li Maolin, Qin Xiubin, Yu Yuancheng, Zhang Fa, Guo Xiang, Guo Yiqun, Yu Kuai, Guo Xuguang, Li Wenlong.
Release: China, 22 Dec 2011.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 11 Jul 2012.)