Ci qing

The Spider Lilies has a deep content. It talks about how much people can remember the past and continue to pursue it. Leong is trapped in what happened in the past whereas Yeung is also trapped by her own past. The fate brought these 2 together and helped each other to build their future together from the past they shared. The story is strong but the acting is kind of weak. Not much chemistry between these two. There is not much going on when they get intimate with each other. It is not convincing the two share the same passion. I guess that is the major drawback in the film. It was sweet and bitter when the film showed their past. There is actually more emotion involved and more convincing with their past. Overall, it is a nice movie to watch.

A beautiful, yet unfulfilled romance… It seems that Taiwanese cinema is finally re-establishing in a manner of art house flicks. With Silk, Eternal Summer and now Spider Lilies, there is no question of doubt that Taiwanese directors are wonderful talents. While Spider Lilies seem rather commercial on the cover of the artwork, with the cute-eyed Raine Yang and the almost unrecognisable Isabella Leong, there is little questioning that it attracted a lot of a certain gender's attention. Full credit must be given to Isabella, who has now taken a path to a career stepwise an inch closer to Best Actress glory, with 2005's Isabella and now this. With that being said, Spider Lilies is certainly a beautiful film to watch and the constant cuteness of Raine is always going to add further viewing points, but the film ultimately remains slightly lacking and leaving the audience rather unfulfilled.

The movie goes like this: Rainie Yang plays cute web cam girl Jade, who wants to get a tattoo to attract her online clients. She visits the tattoo parlor run by Takeko (Isabella Leong), and immediately remembers Takeko to be her childhood crush. Jade sees a stunningly beautiful spider lily pattern on Takeko's wall. She pleads Takeko to tattoo that on her body as "a mark of love", without knowing how special this poisonous flower means to Takeko. Takeko pretends to have forgotten Jade, but there are actually traumatic experiences that Takeko can never forget...

Director Zero is no stranger to queer movies and apparently won the Taiwanese Best Director Award for some film called Splendid Float. Here, Zero seamlessly plays the film like a normal film and making the lesbian scenes all the more natural without a tick of queerness. Perhaps it is due to the pretty face of Raine who performs well enough to be acclaimed as an underrated performance. However, the real star of the show is really Isabella. Perhaps it is due to her make up or whatever; Isabella is acted like an accomplished actress beaming with confidence. Neo is daring to say that Isabella is an outside chance to be the next Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk. At times, Neo felt as though he is watching someone else, a real TB (tomboy) and now that's a compliment.

Still, director Zero struggles to create something more, something deeper and something more relevant. It is a shame that the built up and structure seems so promising and along with the photogenic faces, one can only wish Zero should have done more. When the film reaches its conclusion, it fails to answers most of the questions that it initially raised, which only further hampers the film.

Needless to say, the film is beautiful filmed and the lighting and use of colours are amazingly beautiful to endure. However, Spider Lilies come up rather short of its lofty ambitions and the result is an unfulfilled movie and leaving the audience wanting a lot more. Aside from these short comings, it is almost impossible to resist the moment when Raine kisses Isabella and their steamy hot sequence. Without being bias from a male perspective, the film does attempt to say something about memories. Perhaps it is true that it is human nature to remember the moments and people that they like and choose to forget moments that they do not want to remember. While, Neo can relate to the aforementioned line, the film fails to capitalize on any real issue and once again comes up falling short. Then again, any of that is unlike to deter the fans of the ultra cute – Raine Yang…

I rate it 7.5/10

• www.thehkneo.com

The film struck a chord with me back in 2008, so much so that I reviewed it on my old "Nanchatte" Wordpress Blog back in '08...

Since then my Japanese has become fluent and I have spent some years learning Chinese and tonight watched it one more time, wondering if it would bear repeated viewing after all the changes in my life.

Although, 10 years ago, this film was marked due to the lesbian theme, this film has nothing to do with lesbianism... at all... It makes exactly Zero (no pun intended) statements regarding sexuality and the main characters are totally at ease with their orientations.

No, this is essentially a Cathartic film about trauma and the different ways people deal with it.

One of the leads tries her hardest to remember everything, to hold on to every single sweet moment, few and far between though they were, as if they were her last and most precious possessions. She believes that everything is transient and that existence is only as real as the memories of those involved. Be forgotten and you cease to exist. She surrounds herself with all her positive memories and lives almost in a dream.

The other is the opposite: Stony and cold, she has cut herself off from the pain of her past by forcing herself to forget everything, and plods lifelessly through the present like a rootless tree. For her, only the present has meaning and as soon as something moves into the past, it is left behind. Contradictorily she fills her days and nights with guilt for something she perceived as her fault and as apparent punishment she denies herself any solace that would heal her.

Flashbacks serve to flesh out the pasts and allow us to come to understand why they are the way they are today, one's slow reawakening from a morbid, empty state and another's persistence to never be forgotten.

We learn how guilt can arise from one's actions in times of stress and cause one to blame oneself and how emotional starvation can present itself in a multitude of ways.

As a father in Japan a country which has had more than its fair share of disasters, some of the scenes I found indescribably painful, the scenes where this film depicts loneliness though brief, were some of the most heart wrenching moments I've seen on screen to date and left me in tears for the second time.

As for the acting, the 18 year old Isabella Leong shows remarkable adaptability for this demanding role; She plays a high school pupil, a devoted sister, a substitute mother and a passionate lover with believability and empathy.

Every moment she's on the screen, she captivates and convinces the audience, pulling them into her world.

Rainy manages to pull entirely different heartstrings throughout the film and bares her damaged soul in an extremely convincing fashion.

The one other actress, whom for spoiler reasons I won't mention is really an unsung highlight of the movie... I found myself blubbering like a babe pretty much every single time she was on the screen...

The non-linear storyline flits from present to past in a slightly uneven and disconcerting way. Some scenes appear cut short and hurried, while others appear to linger a little longer than is comfortable. Intentional no doubt, but it does make the rhythm of the film a little difficult to follow.

Despite this slight incoherence and the loss of focus of the jumbled ending, Spider Lilies is without doubt, an intelligent and thought provoking drama. It makes a valiant attempt at uncovering the wide vista of human emotional survival in the face of hardship and succeeds where a lesser film would fail to involve.

p.s. The subtitles on the DVD I rented were OKish but have distinct errors in places.

It's hard to summarize this movie without giving anything away. I will however praise the actors and the production team for doing an amazing job! The movie's soundtrack is one of very few on my ipod that I can listen to daily, after watching the movie the first time it's really worth it just to go back and re-watch it, focusing on the scenes with the backing tracks. They really add amazing atmosphere (and meaning to a small few scenes in particular!) Rainie is amazing as Jade, especially for those that are familiar with her music and drama roles. As soon as the music rolls, the intro titles come up and the viewers see rainie for that first time as Jade, you'll realise you're in for a real treat! Some parts of the movie, typical of foreign movies (if you're a frequent viewer) leave you sitting there thinking, 'what...?' but tie in with the script towards the end, if just barely.

One thing that I really liked, which others may not, is that it is definitely original, unpredictable, and the relationship between the main characters has you glued to the screen in anticipation. Definitely one of my favourite movies that is watched over and over and over.....

Almost in the same league as Yonfan's rather atrocious Color Blossoms, Spider Lillies drives the point home that you can make cutting edge cinema without the edge, or much in the way of cutting. It's a Taiwanese film, which in this day and age is becoming a novelty at an alarming pace, but more than that tidbit, we can find very little in the way of the noteworthy here.

You should know that ostensibly Spider Lillies is also a lesbian-themed story, but in every aspect this is nothing but a plastic ploy to lure in the easily seduced and gullible. In several ways we have here a repeat of fellow recent Taiwan release Eternal Summer. Then it was gay men getting the shortchange treatment, now we have the same thing with women. Zero Chou presents, for your non-existent edification, a tale likely to titillate at most a fifteen year old. They managed some of the art house stance, but in the end this results in a most inane, simply uninteresting foray.

The Hong Kong angle comes in the form of Isabella Leung (Bug Me Not, Isabella, Diary), here sporting her most butch look yet. Although somewhat likable in her previous jobs, Isabella in Spider Lillies is listless and lacking in most departments. Either her heart wasn't into it or the whole lesbian drama pitch didn't quite appeal to her sensibilities.

She does a Taipei tattoo artist who's shy, reclusive and in charge of a mentally challenged younger brother, played by John Shen, who thankfully grants the movie its only thespian-related redeeming feature. Isabella's character, oddly named Takeko but supposedly hailing from Hong Kong, soon hooks up with disaffected youth Jade (Rainie Yang from fondly-recalled Meteor Garden). The latter lives with her grandmother and has a whole list of grievances due to being left behind by her parents and life in general. Sure, the grandmother component works well and is touching, but otherwise Jade as a protagonist is just as unmoving as her counterpart Takeko.

The two women share a past and lots of inadequately covered angst, with Jade working as a webcam girl while Takeko keeps her father's legacy alive with a unique tattoo of a spider lilly emblazoned on her arm. Jade also wants to acquire this very design, which leads to Takeko exploring internal feelings of the issue via flashbacks and rather minimal discourse with the spunky Jade.

Well, if there's little discourse to write the homebase about, is at least the intercourse memorable? In a word, no. They kiss and feign doing the nasty close to the end, but just as Eternal Summer reminded us not long ago, there's a gulf measured in lightyears between showing sexual content and making ticket buyers think they're about to see sexual content.

This cynical expectation-building seals Spider Lillies' fate. With a weak story, ho-hum acting and an overall dearth of relics to take away from the theater with you, this one kind of makes Color Blossoms look good, come to think of it. At least there we got a bit of Teresa Cheung's mammaries. No, Spider Lillies is no AV masterpiece and should be stricken from the playlist of even the most mundane and timid GLB movie festival.

Amazingly for a pseudo-indie release, not even the soundtrack and cinematography produce moments of inspiration. That's just as well, since it makes passing on Spider Lillies much easier. Believe you us, avoid it and you won't be missing out on anything good.

Rating: * *