The Law of Attraction

万有引力

China/Hong Kong, 2011, colour, 2.35:1, 97 mins.

Director: Zhao Tianyu 赵天宇.

Rating: 6/10.

The best comes at the start in this uneven collection of vignettes on various stages of love.

STORY

Beijing, the present day. Encounter 邂逅. For three years, Gao Yuan (Wen Zhang), a 26-year-old low-level accountant in an oil company, has been catching the same flight every Tuesday to Yulin, central China, in connection with an important contract. On this Tuesday, going for an especially crucial meeting, he’s delayed during the security check by a diligent young officer, Shi Xiaolin (Bai Baihe), whose hand scanner wrongly keeps registering metal on him. Furious, Gao Yuan ends up missing his flight – the only one of the week – and berates Shi Xiaolin for ruining his career. She apologises and helps him get on a flight to Xi’an instead, from where he can catch a coach, but that flight is then delayed by bad weather. The two end up having lunch together, during which she suddenly reveals she knows an awful lot about him. Giving Birth 造人. Mathematics professor Wang Yong (Guo Tao) and Xuelian (Zhang Jingchu) are a happily married couple in their 30s but childless. After her sister gives birth, Xuelian decides she and Wang Yong must approach their problem scientifically, by living for three months on super-healthy food and then timing intercourse to the exact moment when she’s ovulating. This doesn’t work out, and Wang Yong gets fed up having to perform on schedule. Instead, he develops a mathematical formula to solve their problem. Derailment 出轨. Married lovers Mei (Mo Wenwei) and Wang Yao – colleagues at work – are injured in a car accident one evening and Wang Yao is hospitalised in a critical condition. Mei’s husband Zhou Yunshan (Dai Liren), apparently unaware of her infidelity, is very understanding and Mei becomes more and more wracked by guilt as she realises she betrayed his love. Rebirth 重生. Young Jiaxin (Huang Huan) is released from a Police Drug Rehabilitation Centre and met outside by her boyfriend Song Haiqiao (Duan Bowen), with whom she stays when her father bawls her out. Both are members of a skydiving team but Jiaxin is about to be replaced due to her drug habit. Song Haiqiao tries to conquer her suicidal depression, and finally comes up with a unique solution.

REVIEW

Like most portmanteau films – and like the first feature of director Zhao Tianyu 赵天宇, culinary thriler Deadly Delicious 双食记 (2008) – The Law of Attraction 万有引力 is a curate’s egg. Four unconnected love stories that broadly describe a relationship arc (Encounter, Giving Birth, Derailment, Rebirth), it again shows the technical facility of Zhao (and d.p. Cao Yu 曹郁), with slightly different looks for each segment (clean, more colourful, darker, rougher), but never really adds up to a whole movie on the theme announced by its English or Chinese titles. (The latter roughly means “Gravity” or “Universal Attraction”.)

The two middle tales, featuring the highest-profile casts, are the least satisfying. Giving Birth 造人, a romantic comedy about a couple trying to conceive, finds comedian Guo Tao 郭涛 in good form and surprisingly well-teamed with a relaxed Zhang Jingchu 张静初 as his ever-desperate wife, but there’s little fresh here that hasn’t been seen in similar comedies. Derailment 出轨, a drama about an unfaithful wife caught in a car accident, has too many shots of Hong Kong actress Mo Wenwei 莫文蔚 [Karen Mok] looking dour in dark glasses and Taiwan’s Dai Liren 戴立忍 [Leon Dai] looking uncommonly nice as her cuckolded husband. It doesn’t really go anywhere, and has only a mild twist near the end.

The final story, Rebirth 重生, mixes drug addiction and skydiving in an uncomfortable mix, and plays more like a 20-minute version of a feature-length romantic drama between two young people. Its wish-fulfilment finale adds a positive end to the film but the segment is too downbeat for an anthology’s final slot.

Best of all is the first segment, Encounter 邂逅, a beautifully constructed miniature set in Beijing airport’s terminal 3 that immediately engages the audience’s sympathies with its opening of an over-zealous security officer making the hero miss his plane, before developing into a tender tale of love and longing. It’s a near-perfect example of cinematic short-storytelling and is played pitch perfect by young leads Wen Zhang 文章 (Mr. & Mrs. Incredible 神奇侠侣, 2011) and Bai Baihe 白百何, supported by fine photography of the airport’s clean, white vistas by Cao that recalls his work on Driverless 无人驾驶 (2010). The potentially exciting news is that Wen and Bai are reteamed in the forthcoming Love Is Not Blind 失恋33天 (2011), directed by Teng Huatao 滕华涛, from the lovelorn romance by writer Bao Jingjing 鲍鲸鲸.

CREDITS

Presented by China Film (CN), Angel Wings Entertainment (CN), Beijing Dadi Century (CN), Earth Entertainment (HK). Produced by Angel Wings Entertainment (CN).

Script: Zhao Tianyu, A Mei. Original stories: Zhao Tianyu. Photography: Cao Yu. Editing: Kuang Zhiliang. Music: Chen Dili. Art direction: Han Yi. Sound: Zhang Yang. Action: Luo Lixian [Bruce Law], Dong Wei. Visual effects: Sun Min. Aerial photography: Greg Gasson. Script consultation: Wang Yao.

Cast: Mo Wenwei [Karen Mok] (Mei), Zhang Jingchu (Xuelian), Guo Tao (Wang Yong, Xuelian’s husband), Dai Liren [Leon Dai] (Zhou Yunshan, Mei’s husband), Wen Zhang (Gao Yuan), Bai Baihe (Shi Xiaolin), Duan Bowen (Song Haiqiao), Huang Huan (Jiaxin).

Release: China, 8 Apr 2011; Hong Kong, tba.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 21 Aug 2011.)