Ren yue li hun hou

Given my admiration for the Asian cinema, and in particular the Hong Kong cinema, I needed very little persuasion to sit down and watch "Love Is the Only Answer" (aka "Ren Yue li hun hou") from director Patrick Kong. I had not heard about this 2011 movie prior to stumbling upon it by sheer luck. I didn't it read the synopsis, I just saw that cover and that was sufficient to make me pick it up, as I believed it to be a romantic comedy.

This movie, however, should be labeled as a big mess, because it definitely was not a romantic comedy. The storyline in "Love Is the Only Answer" made so little sense that it was hard to take the movie seriously in most aspects. And the storyline was just such a scrambled mess of confusion and incoherency that I just gave up along the way attempting to keep track. I did stick with the movie to the end, but it was a prolonged suffering agony, let me tell you that.

The actors had next to nothing to work with in terms of plot, script and storyline, and that was weighing the movie down tremendously. Charmaine Sheh (playing Bobo) was the one whom carried the most of the movie with her performance. I am not familiar with her work in other Hong Kong movies, but she definitely did a good job here, taking into consideration the blender mix of a storyline and script she had to work with.

"Love Is the Only Answer" is by no means a high point to Hong Kong cinema, and I can't honestly come up with a single reason for recommending you to sit down and watch this confusing mess of a movie. In fact, if you enjoy the Hong Kong cinema, then you should definitely avoid this particular title - it is not worth the time, effort or money.

Patrick Kong is clearly a director with one theme, one message and one aim, to strike a chord with the Hong Kong audience, telling you again and again that – love clearly sucks. In fact there are no redeeming factors. In his latest episode, Love is the Only Answer, Kong improves in his delivery and the result is giving out the cynically true message about modern day romance in a manner that does not annoy the audience. Perhaps, Kong has taken a leaf out of Pang Ho Cheung's book of filmmaking, because this film is clearly shorter, dialogues are less self-indulgent and the film actually breezes by in an efficient manner. Points must be given to the ever reliable former TVB's Charmaine Sheh, despite not possessing any good looks; she has presence, easily likable, identifiable and easily a good enough actress. However the pairing of Alex Fong and Charmaine is far from convincing, with the later clearly looking more like an older sibling than a couple. Despite the cheap production sets and values, Kong manages to finally tell the audience something he always wanted to express – nice guys never win, girls love jerks, girls love a challenge and stop being a nice guy. However, it took him a good 10 films before he can just splat it out. If this was Kong's first film, then it would be an accomplishment, but instead it took Kong 6 years to work it out. All in all, there is really no point in saying whether Kong's films are good or plain bad, as there is a recurring market out there that needs these kind of fix. Love sucks and probably does, but next time one will just hope that Kong doesn't use another 10 films just to get to the point…

Neo rates it 6.5/10

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