Tian xia wu shuang

First up, anyone wanting to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style martial arts carry-on should look elsewhere. This film is a one of the increasingly perplexing (to Westerners just after kung fu) school of Hong Kong comedies known as 'mo lei tow' (nonsense) films.

The basic feel of the movie is something akin to the Simpsons set in Ming dynasty China. Women pretend to be men, women fall in love with women pretending to be men, the women pretending to be men fall in love with the actual men, who are trying to fix them up with the women. It's a bit like a Shakespeare comedy, actually, with hilarious surreal flourishes.

So that's all good. Tony Leung is great as the male lead, as always (he's the Hong Kong equivalent of Robert Redford or Paul Newman, though somewhat younger). Faye Wong is equally good as the female lead, and her singing is lovely. The best bit in the film is a scene where Leung and Wong get stuck in quicksand and try to persuade a goose to rescue them.

Sadly, things go awry. Producer/director Wong Kar Wai is notorious (and critically lauded) for making arty, boring films (examples include the dreadful Ashes of Time, and In the Mood for Love), so I was pleasantly surprised that this film was so different. Alas, at the end, Wong tries to inject dramatic weight into proceedings to resolve the romantic tensions, and the action becomes a series of oblique internal monologues containing near-meaningless aphorisms (Wong's "forte"). Stumbling and choking under the weight of this nonsense (and not good, mo lei tow nonsense either), the film's conclusion is unnecessarily leaden and downbeat.

Still, Chinese Odyssey _is_ a funny film, and even the downhillness at the end can be excused. For more genuine examples of mo lei tow cinema (ie, not contrived by an arthouse director selfconciously trying to make his mark on the genre), try Flying Daggers (1993) or Stephen Chow's Forbidden City Cop (1995). In fact, just watch any Stephen Chow film.

Ok, what was good about it? All 4 leads were perfect, the settings were gorgeous, the costumes were amazing, the story unfolded not quite as I thought it would, the witty one-liners got some good belly-laughs, and yes, that singing/dancing opera piece had me in stitches when in any other film it would get turned off. Loved it, loved it, loved it. I had a good laugh watching this, now that the DVD is out I'll be ordering it. 9 out of 10!

This film is produced by Wong Kar Wai. There are a lot of inside jokes and spoofs on Wong's earlier movies. My favourite is the one where the Tony and Faye talk about distance. This is a re-make of their 'Chungking Express' encounter. I was in stitches. If one is not familiar with Wong's work, the movie will therefore be labelled as nonsense.

In the Ming Era, Emperor Chang Chen and his sister, Princess Faye Wong, are anxious to escape the Forbidden City and the Dowager Empress Rebecca Pan. Finally, Miss Wong does so. Disguised as a man, she comes to the restaurant run by Wei Zhao and her bullying, wandering brother Tony Cheung. Cheung and the Empress fall in love, but he doesn't realize she is a girl, so he tries to marry her to his sister. They wander back towards the capital, he finds out the truth. Meanwhile, Chen goes out with a guard to search for his sister. He comes to the restaurant, and he and Miss Zhao fall in love, but she's still smitten with his sister, and he's worried she will only love him for being Emperor, so he pretends to be a wandering fashion designer.

Jeffrey Lau has directed one of those movies turned out by the Chinese film industry which crosses all sorts of genre boundaries, and includes magical bunnies, fights involving non-existent forms of martial arts, and lots of gags. So many gags, including gender-bending gags. At its heart it pretends that it's a mediation on the meaning and means of true love. Perhaps. I found it more than satisfactory, even brilliant, in its variety and extremes of funny bits.

This is a brilliant movie! Not only are there references to Wong Kar Wai's previous works and romantic kung fu films, but the story and characters are from an old Chinese tale and 1960's musical called Jiangshan Mei Ren (The Beauty from Jianshan) which is about the emperor who ventures out disguised as a commoner and falls in love with Pheonix, a lovely girl from the restaurant. The musical numbers and the continuing musical themes (including the La-la parts) are taken from the old 1960's movie and that type of Chinese musical genre. Chinese Odyssey 2002 puts a new spin into the musical numbers as well as developing the story between Pheonix's brother (Tony Lenug) and Princess Wushuang (Faye Wong). This film is enjoyable on its own, but when aware of the references, it just makes it that much funnier and witty. I highly recommend watching the original film and Wong Kar Wai's other works for their own sake, if not to just appreciate this multi-faceted film.