Break Up Club
分手说爱你
Hong Kong, 2010, colour, 1.85:1, 114 mins.
Director: Huang Zhenzhen 黄真真 [Barbara Wong].
Rating: 4/10.
Thin tale of a Hong Kong couple’s ups-and-downs isn’t helped by tricksy direction and a weak script.
STORY
Hong Kong, the present day. Joe Chen (Fang Zuming), still missing former girlfriend Flora (Xue Kaiqi) a year after she dumped him, attends story auditions held by director Huang Zhenzhen (Huang Zhenzhen) who is looking for a “true break-up story” for her next film. He tells her about a website, www.breakupclub.asia, which will reunite you with your ex if you break up another couple’s relationship, and she loans him a mini-cam to record his experiences. After reuniting with Flora by breaking up his filmmaker friend Sunny Deep (Zheng Jianhong) and girlfriend Fanny Wu (Xian Seli), Joe Chen has a dream night with her at The Venetian resort hotel in Macau but next day the pair start arguing again. Flora finds solace with Japanese graffiti artist Hayama Lies (Hayama Hiro), a client at work, who invites her to go with him to his next stop, Barcelona. Meanwhile, Joe Chen mopes alone at home.
REVIEW
Hong Kong director Huang Zhenzhen 黄真真 [Barbara Wong] (Women’s Private Parts 女人那话儿, 2000; Truth or Dare: 6th Floor Rear Flat 六楼后座, 2003) has so far made a whole career out of superficial relationship movies that spread not very much over not very little. Break Up Club 分手说爱你 is no exception. A nice idea for a half-hour short – or a full feature with a properly developed script – the almost two-hour film falls back on the over-used mockumentary format, with Huang and her crew playing themselves, for a simple story about a young, terminally superficial couple who just can’t seem to get it together. The cleverest idea – a re-match website that’s only accessible on a single internet cafe’s terminal – is basically thrown away in favour of under-written emotional antics, vanity movie-making aimed at a small Hong Kong media circle, and tricksy direction that should have been left behind at film school.
The movie gets by on individual performances: Xue Kaiqi 薛凯琪 [Fiona Sit], reunited here with Fang Zuming 房祖名 [Jaycee Chan] five years after her debut in the likeable 2 Young 早热 (2005); Deng Jianhong 邓健泓, as a kind of Chinese composite of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey in Wayne’s World (1992); and Hong Kong-based Hayama Hiro 叶山豪 as a Japanese graffiti artist who charms Xue’s character away from her loser boyfriend. In company with these, Fang seems even more colourless than usual in a thinly-written part, hard to identify with in the emotional, over-long finale. In the middle section with Hayama, director Huang drops the annoying minicam look (for reasons only revealed in the fabricated finale) and the movie threatens to develop some substance in the relationships. But that, like most of the film, proves unsustainable.
CREDITS
Presented by Diva Productions (HK). Produced by Joyful Founder (HK).
Script: Zheng Danrui [Lawrence Cheng], Huang Zhenzhen [Barbara Wong]. Photography: Xie Zhongdao [Kenny Tse]. Editing: Zhong Weizhao [Azrael Chung]. Music: Mai Zhenhong [Brother Hung]. Songs: Mai Zhenhong [Brother Hung]. Art direction: Xian Yilong. Costume design: Ye Shuhua [Sukie Yip]. Sound: Chen Weixiong, Wang Qingsheng, Zhao Jiacheng.
Cast: Fang Zuming [Jaycee Chan] (Joe Chan), Xue Kaiqi [Fiona Sit] (Fa/Flora), Deng Jianhong (Sunny Deep), Hayama Hiro (Hayama Lies), Xian Seli (Fanny Ng), Zheng Danrui [Lawrence Cheng] (himself), Huang Zhenzhen [Barbara Wong] (herself), Lin Keren (Gus, producer), Shi Shaolin (first assistant director), Stephen Ng (second assistant director), Stanley Chow (third assistant director), Zheng Shaoping (Lin, manager).
Premiere: Hong Kong Film Festival (I See It My Way), 3 Apr 2010.
Release: Hong Kong, 16 Jun 2010.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 29 Oct 2010.)