The Third Way of Love

第三种爱情

China/South Korea, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 113 mins.

Director: Yi Jae-han 이재한 | 李宰汉 [John H. Lee].

Rating: 4/10.

Corny melodrama, set in Shanghai, has a detached, South Korean feel, courtesy of its director.

STORY

Shanghai, the present day. On a flight from Hong Kong, a man sees a young woman, Zou Yu (Liu Yifei), crying across the aisle and passes her some tissues. When Zou Yu arrives at her flat, she finds her depressive younger sister, Zou Yue (Meng Jia), has attempted suicide, due to an unrequited crush on Lin Qizheng (Song Seung-heon), the super-wealthy CEO of heavy industries conglomerate Zhilin Group, where she works in the finance department. Zou Yu, who is a lawyer at the small but well-regarded Qingtian Law Firm, goes to see Lin Qizheng and demands he fixes the problem. He recognises her as the woman in the plane, but says nothing; though he says he hardly knows Zou Yue, he says he’ll transfer her out of sight to another department. Later, Zou Yu meets Lin Qizheng again, when she’s called out to convince a pro bono client, construction worker Wang (Pan Yigang), from committing suicide over unpaid compensation for RMB200,000; the contractor is Zhilin Group, and she and Lin Qizheng solve the problem together. When Zou Yu’s boss hears Zhilin Group is looking for a new legal firm, he convinces Zou Yu to use her connection with Lin Qizheng to bid for the job. Though small, Qingtian Law Firm gets the contract but Zou Yu tells Lin Qizheng that she wants no special favours in return or his personal feelings for her to get in the way. Lin Qizheng twice tries to date her but she turns him down. Meanwhile, Jiang Xinyao (Jiang Yuchen), the daughter of a company chairman who’s doted on Lin Qizheng since she was young, returns from studying in the UK and makes her feelings clear to him. After Zou Yu accompanies Lin Qizheng on a business trip within China, she finds herself falling for him, and eventually they end up bed together. Though he says he wants to marry her, she insists she can’t be bought and wants a free relationship. He humours her for the time being, but then Zhilin Group’s finances go into freefall after Lin Qizheng’s elder brother is caught embezzling funds.

REVIEW

The bumpy history of China-South Korea co-productions doesn’t get any smoother with The Third Way of Love 第三种爱情, the latest overseas expedition by Seoul-born, US-raised film-maker Yi Jae-han 이재한 | 李宰汉 [John H. Lee], following his New York-set street-gang drama The Cut Runs Deep 컷 런스 딥 (1999) and Japan/Thailand-set Sayonara Itsuka 사요나라 이츠카 (2010). Yi’s propensity for thinly-drawn characters – also visible in his Alzheimer’s melodrama A Moment to Remember 내 머리 속의 지우개 (2004) and even in his only half-decent film to date, Korean War drama 71 – Into the Fire 포화 속으로 (2010) – is pretty full-on here, with a poor but feisty lawyer falling for a rich but troubled CEO. However, the most notable thing about Third Way is its total Korean-isation of a Mainland story with Chinese characters: even more than in co-productions like A Good Rain Knows 好雨时节 (2009) or A Wedding Invitation 分手合约 (2013), the cast speak Mandarin but go through Korean emotions and situations in settings that sometimes don’t even look like the Mainland.

The only reason for watching is an okay performance by Liu Yifei 刘亦菲, 28, an actress noted more for her tearfulness than for her expressiveness. At least in the first half, she draws a convincingly independent, mettlesome lawyer who can’t be bought on an emotional level, before falling victim to the demands of the weepie genre. It’s up there with some of her better performances, as in Love in Disguise 恋爱通告 (2010) and A Chinese Ghost Story 倩女幽魂 (2011). Unfortunately, the script – co-adapted by pseudonymous Mainland author Ziyou Xingzou 自由行走 (aka Andrea Peng) from her own novel, first published online in 2007 – starts making Liu’s character do entirely unmotivated things around the hour mark as her personality has been constructed to that point – like falling for a rich, conceited businessman with whom she has nothing in common and selling out all the principles she supposedly holds so dear.

In this respect, Liu’s lack of on-screen chemistry with her co-star, South Korea’s Song Seung-heon 송승헌 | 宋承宪, 39, doesn’t help; neither does his poorly synched and unsuitable re-voicing into Mandarin. Song’s wooden, machismo style worked well as a gangster in A Better Tomorrow 무적자 (2010) and as a 1960s serviceman in Obsessed 인간중독 (2014); but in Third Way he just looks cold and conceited, not breaking sweat for a second and not looking or acting remotely Chinese. Liu has co-starred before with a South Korean: her excellent chemistry with singer Jeong Ji-hun 정지훈 | 郑智薰 (aka Rain) in For Love or Money 露水红颜 (2014) only emphasises the miscasting of Song in Third Way.

However, Song isn’t all to blame. Even in the first half, before the film tips into cornier and cornier melodrama, Yi shows a lack of any consistent tone, with comedy and drama often playing in the same scene. The dialogue, co-written by Yi and regular Korean collaborator Yi Man-huei 이만희 | 李万喜, is of the “would you still love me if I became a pauper?” variety and in many of the serious moments becomes very literary and almost undeliverable. The soundtrack, loaded with Debussy and Sain-Saëns at crucial moments, is no less cliched.

Supporting performances are purely decorative. As a jokey colleague of Liu’s character, Taiwan singer-presenter Ou Hansheng 欧汉声, 37, is there simply for comic relief, while Taiwan actress-singer Jiang Yuchen 江语晨, 29, has an equally manufactured role as a pretty (and pretty bitchy) love rival. Also like Jiang making her film debut, third-billed Mainlander Meng Jia 孟佳, 27, a former member of South Korean-Chinese girl group Miss A, registers dully in the annoying role of the suicidal younger sister of Liu’s lawyer.

Following the usual practice of South Koreans who shoot in China, key crew is mostly imported, with d.p. Bak Jang-hyeok 박장혁 | 朴章爀 giving the film a cold, detached sleekness that is utterly Korean. Ziyou Xingzou’s novel was previously adapted into a 32-part TV drama, The Third Name of Love 绝爱 (2014), directed by Yu Zhong 俞钟 and starring Zhang Xinyi 张歆艺 and Li Guangjie 李光洁. For the record, the first two types of love are explained – fairytale but deceptive, real but troublesome – but not the third.

CREDITS

Presented by HS Entertainment Group (CN), Pegasus Ubiquitous Culture Media (CN), SM Contents Investment (SK). Produced by HS Gala-Pictures (Beijing) (CN).

Script: Ziyou Xingzou [Andrea Peng], Yi Jae-han, Yi Man-heui, Niu Han. Novel: Ziyou Xingzou [Andrea Peng]. Photography: Bak Jang-hyeok. Editing supervision: Zhang Jia, Baek Seung-hun. Editing: Gim U-hyeon. Music: Seo Jae-hyeok, Jang Ji-weon. Music direction: He Haotian. Art direction: Bai Furui. Costumes: Choi Seon-ok. Sound: Ji Jing. Visual effects: Seong Hyeong-ju (Macrograph).

Cast: Liu Yifei (Zou Yu), Song Seung-heon (Lin Qizheng), Meng Jia (Zou Yue, Zou Yu’s younger sister), Ou Hansheng (Gao Zhanqi, Zou Yu’s office colleague), Jiang Yuchen (Jiang Xinyao), Zong Xiaoju (Ouyang, department head), Qu Gang (Fu), Liu Jin (labour contractor), Pan Yigang (Wang, suicidal worker), Xue Yuanyuan (Wang’s wife), Gao Rui (young Lin Qizheng), Liu Zhiyun (Zheng, chairman), Zhao Yiming (Ding Jia, Zou Yue’s blind date), Feng Dalu (Lin Qizheng’s father), Zhang Pingjuan (Lin Qizheng’s mother).

Release: China, 25 Sep 2015; South Korea, 19 May 2016.