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Timeless
Romance |
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review | awards | availability | |
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Tats Lau |
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Year: |
1998 |
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Director: |
Jeff
Lau Chun-Wai, David Lai Dai-Wai |
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Action: |
Corey
Yuen Kwai |
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Cast: |
Tony
Leung Chiu-Wai,
Theresa Lee Yi-Hung, Chiu Ngan-Suk, Tats
Lau Yi-Tat, Spencer
Lam Seung-Yi, Bat
Leung-Gum |
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The
Skinny: |
This
wildly uneven multi-genre film from director Jeff Lau
manages to bring back fond memories of years past. |
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Review
by Kozo: |
This throwback HK flick harkens back to an era where
chaos and rapid-fire shenanigans were all the rage.
Sadly that isn’t the case anymore, and it renders Timeless
Romance an uneven but amusing enterprise. Jeff Lau’s
multi-genre comedy/action flick steals heavily from
Wong Kar-Wai, giving us lots of voice-over and existential
musings about love and identity.
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai is a cop
who falls for a dead woman (Korean actress Chiu Ngan-Suk)
- who became so when she was raped by the boss of a
couple of lowly gang members (Theresa Lee and Tats Lau).
After the boss double-crosses our plucky pair, Leung
finds himself drawn into a strange encounter with the
reincarnated soul of Kwan, a refugee from the era of
the Three Kingdoms. This provides an opportunity for
all our heroes to travel through time, and at the end
of the tunnel is the reincarnated dead woman - who’s
now a general. Leung now has a chance to win his true,
timeless love - even though the set-up for such a heartfelt
payoff is zero to nonexistent.
This sort of wackiness was
successful in the eighties, but it seems strangely out
of place here. Leung is decent, but he apparently sleepwalked
through the role. His chemistry with Chiu Ngan-Suk must
have been left on the cutting room floor - if there
ever was any chemistry to begin with. She’s a pretty
face, but provides nothing but blankness. That these
two find romance is totally uncompelling. It would have
been better if a higher-caliber actress had been the
female lead, but the role is incredibly underwritten
anyway.
On the plus side, there are
a lot of funny situation jokes, but they’re muted amid
a bizarre, uneven story that taxes even Jeff Lau. There
are too many characters to follow - knowledge of the
time period would help, otherwise figuring out what’s
going on may be a difficult chore. There are flashes
of familiar HK charm buried in the film, and that provides
for an amusingly average experience. (Kozo
1998) |
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Awards: |
5th
Annual Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards
• Recommended Film
• Winner - Best Screenplay (Anonymous) |
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Availability: |
DVD
(Hong Kong)
Region 0 NTSC
Mei Ah Laser
Widescreen
Cantonese and Mandarin Language Tracks
English and Chinese Subtitles |
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image
courtesy of Mei Ah Laser Disc Co., Ltd.
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Copyright ©2002-2017 Ross Chen
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