Chinese Chocolate

This is the worst movie I've seen in a long time! Ouch! It's in focus, and has audible sound and some pretty nice colors and costumes: that's the best I can say for it. A couple of pretty women cross paths, but that surely does not make it clear that they were made for each other. They meet all sorts of crummy men, and equally rotten women, make business deals, make money, and if you've got this movie on DVD it's really hard to see why you'd want to watch the whole thing. Do yourself a favor and don't even bother trying to figure out if a prostitute is any worse than a Chinese immigrant to Toronto. None of the characters is developed deeply enough for you to care, much less to understand, if there's a moral point in this horrible show. Or is the point everybody uses everybody else, so you might as well get married in a church to get your green card? Ick! I'm going to have to reconsider my instinct that movies that have won film festival awards might be worth watching.

Ugghhh!!! Did I ever hate this dull little film. The reason I chose to see Chinese CHOCOLATE is because it was a film about Chinese immigrants living in Canada and some of my favorite films have this, or a similar plot (such as DOUBLE HAPPINESS and BOLLYWOOD/Hollywood). However, instead of having the wonderful and endearing characters like these two other films, the overwhelming messages were "men suck" and "women are idiots"--not exactly messages you want to hear if you want to like anyone in the film! This black & white view of people seemed really immature and silly, yet every single man in the film turned out to be scum by the end of the film--either by cheating on their partners repeatedly, using their women or whoring them out in order to make a buck!! And these were meant to be mostly middle-income people--not inmates or members of a Chinese gang--just "regular" folks!!! And as for the women, they were apparently supposed to be seen as victims of these men, BUT considering that the women blindly walked into these sick relationships and acted rather amorally, it was really tough to feel sorry for anyone. One woman was angered to find that her husband was cheating on her and yet later she had an affair with another woman's husband!! And this same woman moved to America and left her child with her parents!! How can the audience give a darn about anyone so self-involved and awful?! I sure couldn't and I give this movie a 3 simply for production values--the story itself doesn't even merit a 1! Truly this is an ugly and pointless film about ugly and pointless people--what the heck were the writers and director trying to say?! This is a man-hating film that has a lot of sexual content. Because of this (and especially because the film is so morally ambiguous), I strongly recommend you don't let children see it...let alone yourself!

I've seen this film at the Berlin Film Festival. It was a packed, full-house screening. Some people even sat on the stairs watching. They actually added an extra screening later upon the audience's demand. The movie was beautifully shot and performed even though the story was pretty bleak, sometimes too dark to bear. After the screening, there was a heated debate among the audience just like the one happened to Justin Lin's screening of his movie "Better Luck Tomorrow" at Sundance. The interesting issue is that the film was focused on the sexuality of Chinese immigrants, especially women. It's wonderful to see something fresh like this on the screen. But I found many Asian audience had hard time to accept the truth - the dark side of their own race - on the big screen. They might talk about it behind the door but not in public. It's taboo. I understand we all want to see positive images of Asian characters in movies, but the truth is the truth, and it cannot be ignored and neglected.

All I can say is that Chinese Chocolate is bitter but delicious!