The director and cast members -- plus the translator in attendance
-- of the 2017 Hong Kong International Film Festival's opening film
Love Off the Cuff (Hong Kong-Mainland China, 2017)
- From the HKIFF's Galas program
- Pang Ho Cheung, director, co-scriptwriter (with Jimmy Wan and Jody Luk) and co-producer
- Starring: Miriam Yeung, Shawn Yue, Jiang Mengjie, Paul Chun Pui
Out
of the 19 Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) screenings this
year that I went to get tickets for half an hour after the tickets went
on public sale at 10am on March 17th, I only was unable to secure that
for the fest opener. Undaunted, I decided to try for standby tickets on
the day itself and was pretty elated when I did manage to come by a
precious ticket for the world premiere of the much anticipated Love Off the Cuff (which opens in local cinemas some two weeks after its HKIFF screenings).
But when I went into the gargantuan auditorium that is the Hong Kong Cultural Centre's Grand Theatre
and saw row upon row of empty seats up in its upper tiers, I felt
somewhat let down. And the sense of deflation after having some
emotional highs was also the experience I had when viewing the third
installment of Pang Ho Cheung's romantic comedy series that began with
2010's Love in a Puff and also includes 2012's Love in the Buff.
Love Off the Cuff
got off to a creatively offbeat start involving the recounting of a
childhood scary story by Cherie (Miriam Yeung) whose logic Jimmy (Shawn
Yue), ever the smartass, found easy to assail. The duo's discussion was
abruptly halted though when she -- who had been using her lover's legs
as her pillow -- discovered that her hair had got caught in his jean
zipper and it was downright hysterical to see what particular act her
frantic attempts to free herself resembled!
Later
on in the movie, there's another amusing situation that ensues as a
result of fairly innocent actions being plausibly mistakenly assumed to
be far less so. For the most part though, things often are too far
fetched for my liking, particularly since I found myself doing what
Jimmy had done with the horror tale that had scared Cherie so back when
she was a young girl: i.e., too easily find holes to poke in the story
to be able to go with the flow and feel affected by it.
It's
not just the infusion of some outlandish sci-fi components into the
story that didn't work for me. (Actually, that particular absurdity
tickled my funny bone somewhat, as did some of the dirtier jokes in this
film whose makers seemed to want to see how low they could go for
amusement's sake!) Rather, the old problem I had with Love in a Puff
reared its head again here: namely, that I found it difficult to
understand what Cherie saw in Jimmy that would make him her Mr. Right;
which is not a trivial matter when pretty much the whole movie is about
her wondering whether he is indeed the man that she wants to, and should, spend the rest of her life with.
To
be sure, seven years on and two films as a romantic pairing later,
Miriam Yeung and Shawn Yue do exhibit an easy and pleasant chemistry.
But, no doubt in part because their characters' romantic scenes are so
unsexual, they don't convince as lovers; with it really not helping
matters when Miriam Yeung is clearly still wearing a bra even in at
least one scene featuring the star-crossed pair in bed and Shawn Yue's
underpants are too obviously visible underneath a robe when he's
supposed to have discarded them in another scene in which they're
supposed to be feeling all hot and randy.
Another
example of the filmmaking carelessness and narrative laziness that
permeates this movie is the insertion into the picture of a female
character who's supposedly Canadian Chinese, like Jimmy, but appears
able to only converse in Putonghua (essayed by Mainland Chinese actress
Jiang Mengjie), and whose primary reason to be in the picture is to
provide Cherie and Jimmy with things to bicker about. Furthermore,
while the colorful characters played by Paul Chun Pui, Susan Shaw, Jo
Kuk and company can be fun to watch, their antics feel like mere padding
for content that otherwise wouldn't be sufficient for a feature film.
To
sum it up: Miriam Yeung and Shawn Yue deserve better, and Pang Ho
Cheung can do -- and has done -- so much better as a director and
scriptwriter. We're talking about the talented fellow, after all, who's
crafted gems like Women Who Flirt with current regular writing partner Jody Luk and Dream Home with
Jimmy Wan and Derek Tsang (who has an on-screen role in this movie as
Cherie's brother), and whose solo scripting efforts include Aberdeen (the 2014 Hong Kong International Film Festival's much stronger opening film).
My rating for the film: 6.0
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