Telephone 601
Director: Zhang Guoli
Year: 2006
Rating: 2.5
Aka - The 601st Phone Call
I have had this DVD sitting around gathering
moss for years. Probably since it came out. In those days anything with Cecilia
Cheung was a must have, but some sixth sense stopped me from watching it.
Till now. I have had a stone lodged in my upper kidney for about the same
length of time and it would have been less painful to pass that. Let me knock
on wood because I really don't want that to happen. This stone and I are
old friends. After watching this, I had to check to see when the scandal
that happened to Cecilia took place. I thought maybe this was filmed afterwards
and that would explain why it was so bad. But no, that happened in 2008 but
there was a five year gap between this film and her next one. Maybe a co-incidence.
Maybe not. This film is as sullen and miserable as a little boy who had his
toys taken away. There are three main characters and all of them are depressed
and close to despair. This is a Mainland production.
Yishu (Bibi Zhou) is an office worker and
something of a nebbish. She thinks her life is unlucky. She falls down a
manhole while walking and when she climbs out a water spray truck is passing
by. All of her boyfriends are nabbed by girls in the office and they call
her a Training Ground. Xiao Wen (Hu Ge) is a songwriter without much success
yet and is trying to write a song for the popular singer Tianyu (Cecilia).
Cecilia was a popular singer in real life as well as an actress and so I
assume she is singing her songs. Tianyu is enormously popular but an
unhappy girl. She hates the material she is given and refuses to put out
an album, "Without a good song, what is the point of living". Boo hoo.
Her record company beats her up to persuade
her to work faster. She is about to kill herself by jumping - her manager
is hoping she will so that sales will go through the roof - but she gets
a call. Who doesn't answer the phone just as they are about to jump to their
death. It's a song. The three characters are connected because Yishu's phone
number was released on the internet as that of Tianyu and she gets thousands
of calls. She seems not to know that there is a way to silence it. Her co-workers
should have done it for her. Xiao is one of the callers and thinks she is
an assistant to Tianyu and plays the song for her. But Xiao isn't doing
well - we get a hint when his hair starts falling out and his nose bleeds.
Never good signs in a miserable movie. Slow as molasses and just as sticky.
