Perhaps Love

I love this movie.

First of all, please do not compare it to Moulin Rouge. Yes, it's opening made it look like a boring musical, but actually the singing and dancing are just eye candies for the audience. The love story presented is simple. I don't even think it as a romance movie. I think of it more as a drama about love more. I guess the reason I felt this way is because I watched the Chinese version (better communication compared to English sub.) and I was in a situation that questioning my own love life. This movie gave me another perspective looking at love relationship.

Don't you feel related to any one of them, or part of? How many of us really have something true? Why do you think Sun Na and Lin Jian Dong still break up at the end of movie? Answers can be diverse and it all depends on your own experience. Yes, Sun Na was once Jian Dong's true love. She messed it up. He loved her ten years ago and still presently, but more complicated with hatred, revenge. There is no way they will be together any more.

It looks like the movie is talking about a love triangle, but I think it's talking about love in general. I relate it to real life. People can be running away not just from poverty, they can be running away from a bad love relationship, bad family relationship to start a new love relationship. How many of us had relationship like Sun Na and Nie Wen's? (Gain from each other's strength, not necessary in a bad intention.) I bet there are a lot.

Anyway, the movie is beautiful. Zhou Xun has always been great. Takeshi did a good job in this film surprisly. Director Chan, I'm waiting for your next great work! No pressure :) When I got time, I will write more.

See you.

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.

It's really wonderful to see such an emotional film so beautifully executed. I thought that this film has the eye-candy of Molin Rouge but with a far more convincing performance from all of the actors involved. There literally isn't a weak link in the chain, and I think it really is very original and genre defying, and refreshing to see such a gorgeous film come out of Asian cinema that's not a kungfu film. It's too bad that the buzz for this film hasn't really started in the states, but I'm hoping that more people will hear about it. It's soooo much better than Seven Swords or Anything "Asian" that Hollywood has served up recently. And far more entertaining.

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.

Why do we like to put movies in categories? Why do we have to compare such a splendid movie with other musical movies? All movies are different. Just because Perhaps Love is not as musical as other musical movies does not mean it is worse than those movies.

I personally loved the movie. the characters performed beautifully, the songs were original and empathetic. The plot seemed simple, yet complex and deep. The idea of 'film making' in a film is clever and well fitted. The costumes were designed exceptional as we see clear contrast between the past in BeiJing and the present new Sun Na.

The introduction was philosophical. Life is a movie. you could be the protagonist on someone's movie, or just a glimpse of the face.

The love between the 3 people seemed simple yet extremely complex. and the twist at the end of sad yet realistic.

In conclusion, Perhaps Love is a masterpiece. it needs more explorations to be completely understand, but i think it's worthwhile. Good Job!