Romancing in Thin Air
Director: Johnnie To
Year: 2012
Rating: 6.0
It seems
that whenever Johnny To wants to clean his palate from his often dark and
violent crime films, he turns to something light and comedic with a strong
dash of romance. And the instrument he has used most often to convey charm,
humor and romance was Sammi Cheng. From Needing You in 2000, To was to star
Sammi in six films in four years ending with Yesterday Once More in 2004.
After that for the next five years, he directed a series of classic gritty
stop your heart crime films. Here he is back to romance with Sammi
but he keeps the comedy very much in the periphery with side characters.
The main event makes no attempt to bring humor into the equation. It is two
broken hearts colliding and trying to find a reason to go on. In the depths
of despair. You have to just keep going forward. We have all been there.
Faced the abyss of emptiness and found our way out. I have had friends
who didn't and I wish I could have been there just to tell them that you
can make it. That death is never the answer. Eternity is a long damn time.
It can wait. I don't want to give the impression that this film is a downer
- it isn't - it is about two people helping each other make it to the other
side.
Sau (Sammi) runs a small hotel in the hinterlands
of Yunnan - up high in the mountains where the air is hard to come by. It
is a rustic hotel with two other staff members - Beauty and Teeny - but customers
are as hard to come by as the air. The community is warm and embracing and
the land stunning in its pristine beauty. But almost as if in a folk tale,
the forest beckons you in. The forest is the evil in this happy land where
it is hard to find your way out. Signs everywhere warn people not to go in.
Sau makes a run into town to pick up supplies and unknowingly also picks
up a stowaway. Michael (Louis Koo), a famous movie star who just publicly
had his girlfriend (Gao Yuanyuan - in To's Don't Go Breaking My Heart 1 &
2) leave him at the alter for an old love. He has gone on a major bender
and stayed incommunicado with everyone.
He ends up at the hotel and slowly heals
after first trying to kill himself. Sau and her two friends - as well as
the local doctor (veteran Tien Niu) pull him out of his depression - after
first taking selfies with him. They know who he is and are all huge fans.
Koo must have loved playing this role. What Michael doesn't realize at first
is that Sau's pain that she keeps undercover is digging a black hole through
her. The man she loved went into the forest to find a young boy and never
came out. That was seven years ago and she is sure he will return. Till then
everything has to stay the same - the three broken keys on the piano, the
broken-down truck, her love. Nothing can change. I have read a few
reviews in which people talk about how much this film touched them, helped
them. They are in a different place than I am. I felt aloof from the film
- much of it felt manipulative and silly to me. The wedding scene, the film
that Michael makes to bring her out of her misery and an ending that felt
so artificial that my teeth hurt. And in truth I find Koo as the romantic
partner to Sammi off-putting. I can see him as her younger brother, but not
her love interest. She deserves better. To leaves not only his crime films
behind but also ventures out of his usual urban landscapes to set it in something
out of Shangra-la where the evil is killed by the knight. Or the modern day
equivalent - a movie star.
