sangepengyou

A frantic royal family seeks to regain its honor by marrying off its young princess. But finding her a prospective mate who is up to snuff is the least of their worries; finding anyone who can bear to be in the same room with her is downright impossible owing to her unfortunate and mysterious birth defect-- an incomprehensible bodily odor. At their wits' end, the emperor and empress send a proclamation throughout their land to find the man who can cure her and become her husband. Enter an aspiring aromatherapist, Richie Jen (here listed Richie Ren), who is driven by a passion to validate his life's work. But he isn't the only one who has set his sights on the prize-- there's plenty of other palace intrigue going on beneath surface. But, with the aid of a young woman played by Miriam Yeung and her fishmonger friends, Jen(Ren)is determined he can succeed.

Light weight comedy with some moments of downright silliness and beautiful costumes and sets.

I'm not entirely sure why I passed on this film when it landed in my city. Perhaps it was a busy schedule or perhaps it was the blatant comparison to the Italian "Cinema Paradiso" in the advertising used for this film.

With all due respect to the "CP", while the two films share an early common thread of a young child with a passion for movies (with a requisite "single mom" in a small town), these two films should not really be compared side by side. The desire and temptation toward comparison would be deceptive and misleading to most expectations of most potential viewers. Indeed, they are very different stories. Nor should "CP" used as a benchmark for all films which have a child character that enjoys going to the movies. Not that it isn't without merit, but, rather, again, this is a different film with a very different feel. The Italian film was meant to have a big emotional bang; this Chinese film, however, goes the restrained route of slow, emotional realization.

We meet our heroine, Ling Ling, as she commits what appears to be an act of senseless violence-- striking a bicycle-riding man on the head with a brick. Then as the wounded victim (Mao Dabing) confronts his assailant we are utterly confounded by her silent, dogged insistence that he go to her apartment and feed her fish-- it is she who should be owing him redress, not vice versa. Dumbfounded, the victim agrees and there begins a journey back into the events that led up to Ling Ling's seemingly incomprehensible action against him. It is this backward shift of gears that forces a discovery of character revelation which goes beyond a simple childhood love of film.

As Dabing sifts through Ling Ling's possessions (most notably her diaries), he comes to learn how life sometimes has a peculiar way of coming full circle; events which may seem random and senseless are not always necessarily what they seem to be. And, in many ways, as the plot unfolds, this is actually a small film about forgiveness and reconciliation. In this respect, it seemed vaguely reminiscent of the Chinese film "Seventeen Years".

Enjoyable little film -- a tale of family, friendship, loss, and reconciliation-- which should be allowed to stand on its own merits and not be unnecessarily thrown into a comparison with other films for the sake of marketing. This a decidedly Chinese film.

Delightful comedic Hong Kong romp about the perils of young love and how things can get out of hand when family mixes into the mix.

Candy Lo plays Kaka, a young would-be misfit, who manages to land a job at a company because of an unexpected letter of recommendation from a family fiend. On the way to the interview, she meets Sang only to discover later that he is her new boss. He is from a wealthy, flamboyant family who are superstars of the HK social scene, while she is strictly working class. As an unlikely and unexpected office romance begins to blossom between the two of them an even more unexpected complication pulls a dark cloud over their relationship. When Sang's father learns of the pending engagement, he is delighted until he learns Sang's fiancée's identity then immediately orders his son to break off the engagement-- all because of a family secret. Jilted without warning or reason, Kaka nearly goes crazy with grief until yet another family secret explodes on the scene and complicates things all the more.

Lies upon lies reveal an almost incomprehensible tangled web of deception that just may never become unraveled. And, just when it seems like everyone will go mad, even more unexpected secrets boil to the surface. In the end, things are not always what they seem...or, are they? A seemingly ordinary premise takes some downright crazy twists and turns and serves up some truly genuine laughs. This is truly one off-beat film, but definitely one good for a laugh.