Para Para Sakura
Director: Jingle Ma
Year: 2001
Rating: 4.5
Sooner or later everyone has to Para Para Sakura.
It’s like a giant slow moving lifeless blob that will follow you wherever
you go in life waiting for you to succumb to the inevitable. I recall dipping
my foot into this inert mindless mass years ago and pulling it out quickly
in something akin to revulsion. I think this was likely within the first
five minutes in which the main actor gyrates on a stage in a pink t-shirt
and the announcer asks the watching audience whether anyone wanted “this
hunk”. That was enough for a first attempt. There is only so much a
sensitive man can take. But I am older now though clearly not much wiser
and so I went into the deep water again. Good God no, someone pull me out,
please pull me out. Oh no, it’s too late. It’s Aaron Kwok looking so fit
and cute and trying so hard to dance. So much Aaron Kwok. I feel myself
drowning in Kwokiness and I may never be seen again. I need to come up for
air.
I am wondering whether the words Jingle Ma in Cantonese mean "pretty and
empty". As in that girl is just so Jingle Ma. If not, you have my permission
to start using it, but I have trademarked it. Jingle Ma is a great cinematographer
and has lensed many of my favorite films, so you can’t say don’t let him near
a camera again but I think you can say don’t let him near a script. He just
enjoys making really pretty, light hearted films that are so weightless that
it makes your average fluff seem like snuff. But lots of people very much
enjoy these films and who am I to want to deprive them of their pleasures
any more than I would want to stop someone from going to a petting zoo. And
in truth I have quite a guilty liking for one of his films that will be discussed
in a future post when I have left the country and taken on another identity.
So there is Aaron Kwok as Philip Wong who is a dance/aerobics instructor
with classes full of incredibly attractive women who throw themselves at him
like coins in the Trevi Fountain in Rome. But he is shy and very unsure of
himself around the opposite sex. This is seemingly due to his lack of being
able to see color. That is until the ever giggling Yuri (played by Cecilia
Cheung as if taking snorts of helium gas throughout) keeps bumping into him
and knocking him down. Meeting cute in other words. A tried and true romantic
comedy foible since they began making movies. With her he sees color, vivid
pinks and greens.
Yuri turns out to be the Japanese daughter of a wealthy department store
owner and is engaged to someone she has known since she was a little girl.
Sort of an arranged marriage. Once you have that fact under your belt you
know exactly where this movie is going and does it ever go there but with
less interest and more predictability than the NRA defending another mass
shooting. Along the way there are two dance numbers that were harmless
enough. I don’t want to make it sound like I hated this film because
I didn’t. I just woke up from it with less respect for myself than I prefer.
It goes by and the world moves on. Cecilia tries hard to be adorable but perhaps
a bit too much and Aaron tries to be humble and meek and that plays as well
as a tuba in a rock band. In the film, his friend says of his character “You
are good looking but boring” and in my mind that perfectly fit Aaron Kwok
and I suppose why I have never warmed up to him as an actor. Though clearly
physically talented as he has shown in many films he always seems to be skating
by on his looks and bland charm. In fact, for much of his career you could
call him Jingle Ma, but I will admit that once he hit the ancient age of
forty he seemed to be growing into a more mature actor in films like After
This Our Exile and The Detective. I have to say I have seen him in nothing
recently so I am not sure if these films were an aberration or a trend.
