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Review
by Kozo: |
Effective
direction and decent leads can't lift Embrace Your
Shadow, a frightfully average romantic drama from
director Joe Ma. The Love Undercover auteur's
second stab at drama, Embrace Your Shadow recycles
old themes and plot devices to tell a tale of love
on the wrong side of the tracks. Taiwan TV star Dylan
Guo is Juchin, a petty thief who loses his head when
he meets the pretty, but dour Ran (Fiona Sit).
Juchin enters Ran's
life when Shiayou (Chung Ching-Yu), her six year-old
niece goes missing; Juchin bumps into Shiayou after
pulling a job and tries to bribe her into silence
with a digital movie camera. The girl just wants to
go home, so Juchin takes her home, whereupon he meets
Ran, her paralyzed older brother Feng (Cheung Kwok-Keung),
and discovers their unique troubles. Feng has a rare
hereditary blood disease that caused his paralysis,
and Ran could be in line for a similar fate. Juchin
is instantly sold, smitten, or suckered - soon he's
hanging with the family, taking them to barbeques,
and using his thievery to fund a possible operation
for Ran. Predictably, love and even more problems
blossom.
Joe Ma's first drama
was Funeral March in 2001, and Embrace Your
Shadow shares the same opaque directorial style
as Ma's previous effort. Unlike Ma's usual youth comedies,
the characters of Embrace Your Shadow do not
reveal themselves with witty existentialism or long-winded
exposition. Ma instead uses action and situation to
reveal his characters, and the change in style is
welcome. The film's script is spare and features less
soul-baring exposition than your usual Hong Kong film.
While that's not really saying a lot (Hong Kong movies
are known for their egregious exposition), the patience
displayed here is refreshing.
Unfortunately, the story
of Embrace Your Shadow is largely generic,
and given to predictable dramatic devices seen before
in many other films. The characters themselves possess
standard melodrama issues, and some are not fleshed
out enough to warrant the weight given to them. Chief
among these is the character of Fu (Samuel Pang),
an evil triad with a largely unexplained distaste
for Juchin. The existence of Fu does allow for the
film's climax, but by that time the outcome has been
all but announced. If you've seen any films with a
lovelorn guy trying to escape the clutches of an evil
triad, you'll know how Embrace Your Shadow
ends.
Even more, the film
is perhaps too low key. The romance between Sit and
Kuo is given a warm, simmering build-up via initial
antagonism, followed by sidelong smiles, and finally
outright acceptance. But their love takes a backseat
to a bunch of other subplots, including the evil triad
nuisances, and those involving Feng, who has issues
with his ex-wife. The sequences do bring out some
potent drama, and do support the film's theme of unselfish
love. But if the romance between Dylan Guo and Fiona
Sit isn't that compelling, what reason is there really
to watch?
The film does have its
minor positives. Fiona Sit possesses a range unseen
in most Hong Kong actresses of similar age, and Dylan
Guo is handsome, if not a bit blank. Most of the cast
is effective in a low-key manner (except Pang, who
seems to be aping Francis Ng's more undisciplined
performances), and Ma manages a few defly directed
sequences. Fans of the stars will likely find much
to like in the generous screen time given to their
favorite idols. Still, everything that's been done
in Embrace Your Shadow has been done before,
and usually much better. (Kozo 2005) |
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