Perhaps Love

This movie is a stunning masterpiece that showcases a whole new versatility for Asian Cinema. It takes the brash exuberance of Moulin Rouge, the musical-bizaro world of Cirque du Soleil, the color palate of Amelie and ratchets up the imagery and the volume to achieve new heights in cinematography. Farah Kahn leaps to the top of the list of my favorite choreographers of this new century. Easily some of the smoothest vocalists of China's pop and ballad scene have been assembled plus a handful of triple-threat actors weigh in to truly pull off this brave work. This is a beautiful film and my favorite foreign film of the new year.

I saw this movie aboard the plane when I flew back from Beijing to Amsterdam. I saw it on a very bad small 10" (or so) screen, with crackly sound and with a lot of annoying kids around me.

Still I have not enjoyed a movie this much for quite some time. It's much -and I really mean MUCH- better than most of the stuff Hollywood chunks out and I bought it on DVD the day I got back!

For everyone who has ever felt the feeling of losing a love or having an unreachable love, this movie will be very recognizable. It greatly depicts the pain and suffering that can come from true love and although the movie isn't always as easy to follow, it will captivate you and keep you hooked right up to the end.

Apart from the wonderful story, the great backgrounds and superb acting made me an instant fan of Asian cinema. I'd seen a couple of more well known Asian films (like Il Mare for example), but this one opened my eyes entirely. I hope to see more movies like this soon and I recommend it to anyone who can appreciate a good love story!

This is a splendid film about the lost of love, the memory of love, the pursuit of love, and the truth of love. It tells a triangle love story. What I like about this film is not how touching the triangle love is, but how touching this story is told.

It's directed by a famous Hong Kong's director Peter Chan, and staring by the handsome Takeshi Kaneshiro ("House of Flying Daggers," "Turn Left Turn Right"), the talented Zhou Xun ("The Little Chinese Seamstress," "Beijing Bicycle"), the remarkable singer and actor Jacky Cheung, and the Korean heartthrob Ji Jin-hee.

Ten years ago, in Beijing, a Hong Kong film student Lin Jian-dong (Takeshi Kaneshiro) fell in love with an energetic girl Sun Na (Zhou Xun). Sun Na left Jian-dong to pursue her dream to be a movie star, leaving Jian-dong devastated. Ten years later, both of them become big movie stars and their paths cross again when they co-star in a musical. However, the musical's director Nie Wen (Jacky Cheung) also loves Sun Na. Will the old love prevail or will it simply break more hearts? At the beginning, when the music and dancing started, I thought this film is another Hollywood style cheesy musical. I am not a big musical fan, so I got a little worried. That concern quickly disappeared because the heart wrenching story and the marvelous performance settled inside me, deeply. The music and the songs actually move me profoundly. The film brilliantly blends together the musical which two lead characters are filming and the movie itself. The characters are enacting their love affairs through the musical they are playing.

I am glad that Takeshi Kaneshiro speaks perfect Chinese in the film, not like how Zhang Ziyi speaks English in "Memoirs of a Geisha." Heck, even Ji Jin-hee speaks darn good Chinese (perhaps dubbed).

I shed so many tears together with those characters during the screening of this film. I wonder why. Perhaps, love?

I love musicals.. somehow I have doubts for this one.

I expected to see a musical, albeit one without any plots. Musicals are born that way, actors sing to what they suddenly feel like. If you look for a plot in a musical, you're going into the wrong movie.

However, this film is.. I can't describe really what it is. It's a musical, yes, and there's a story. I didn't like the way the music is performed in the movie, though. They depended too much on the play-within-play idea to present the music. All the musical performances happened within the 'film' that the three characters were involved in. You can see that whenever the characters are singing, they are doing it in the 'film', and not in the real life situation. I was expecting a performance to come out from the feeling of that character - like Chicago, when Roxie feels like it, she would suddenly sing to the tune 'Roxie Hart' - of course then the song "All That Jazz" is still done in a 'performance' within the movie. In fact, Tsai MingLiang's The Wayward Cloud, sex and other things aside, would make a better musical - the leads would suddenly change clothings and sing whenever they feel like it.

Am i making sense here? Instead of that sort of thing, I wish that the characters would just sing when they're happy (like that scene in "Singing in the Rain") or when they feel sad, and not doing it because the characters are 'in a movie set'. It just takes the notion of Musical away.

Yes, there is a plot, probably better than other musicals, but then the plot is not strong enough on its own. The music is great, at times touching. Jacky Cheung is an amazing singer, and I didn't know Takeshi could sing that well either (plus good looking and can speak canto, oh my..) The slow love songs are the most beautiful. The cinematography are obviously beautiful and carefully arranged. There are many dancing scenes that are nicely choreographed (except that I wished the singers would dance with the background dancers too, instead of them singing in the middle, doing nothing). I wished also that there would be more singing done by more characters instead of just Jacky or Takeshi, and the other Korean guy, whats his name..?

Nevertheless, its a really good try by an Asian director trying to go global. I just wished it would be less Broadway and more unique Chinese/Asian (the setting are all 20s Harlem sort of feel).And I also really wished there were more people singing. I like the Korean guy's character because he's exactly what musical is all about - who that person is doesn't matter, what matters is that he sings whenever he wants to!

So I think it's a good watch, just to see how Asia can make a musical, too. Plus, the music/costumes/set/cinematography are just too nice to miss.

This is one of the most beautiful movie shot between Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. I was always looking forward to a "singing in the rain" of China. Now it is there.

In my memory, no one is to be compared to Chow yun-fat in Hong Kong movies. But this one really shaken me. Both main characters are to be praise by two thumbs up. The face is Hong Kong movie festival has awarded Zhou Xun with a best actress in a leading role, who acted as Sun Na in the film. Also the plot is fine, ranging between reality and music play. That is something that China has been lack of for years......

Passion will pass away instead of people, that is what I think, the saddest thing of this grown-ups' fairy tale.

Satisfying.... 8/10