Soon to appear in the latest from Wong Jing's production line, [url=https://screenanarchy.com/site/view/trailer-for-zany-chinese-comedy-on-his-majestys-secret-service/][i]On His Majesty's Secret Service[/i][/url], Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu has managed a successful film and television career in soap operas, genre flicks and Hong Kong blockbusters – but last year's [i]My So-Called Love[/i] saw her make a major attempt at serious drama. How did she measure up with an up-and-coming director and a weighty script heavy on the emotional baggage? Find out after the break.
The need to be taken seriously is a common enough motivation for many celebrities. Not all – it's doubtful Miley Cyrus entertains any fantasies of being a real girl while the Mouse House has her future all worked out – but enough to ensure a steady stream of films released that beg the question 'What got him/her involved with [b]this?[/b]' Barbie Hsu is a case in point; come 2008 the thirty-something Taiwanese actress had a successful drama series under her belt (the hugely popular [i]Meteor Garden[/i]), a stint as presenter on a well-known film review programme, a number of relatively high-profile film roles... yet the media machine the world over is happy to chew up women viewed as past their prime and Barbie must have been tempted to try her hand at something worthier, more dramatic, just to invest her career with a little more staying power.
Leading Lee's [i]My So-Called Love[/i] must have seemed like a safe bet. A young woman, Cat (Barbie Hsu), runs away from her troubled home life to the big city where she and her boyfriend Liam cohabit until circumstances force him into compulsory military service. Unable to cope with the separation Cat turns to a troubled succession of short-term relationships, drifting into an unhappy life of casual sex and prostitution, always seeking answers to questions about love that neither she nor her partners ever quite seem to understand.
Sadly, what works for television doesn't necessarily come off on film. While narrative in soap operas certainly takes work, even the best of the medium tends towards the kind of airy fantasy world where credibility plays a distinct second fiddle to giving the viewers what they want ([i]Meteor Garden[/i] was a prime example of this given it functioned largely as a vehicle for Taiwanese boy band F4). [i]My So-Called Love[/i]'s story might have made sense on paper, might even have worked as long-form television comfort food but without anything to ground its plotting inside a two hour stretch, to establish the world it takes place as any kind of believable reality, it ends up a disaster almost from the word go.
Director Leading Lee is better known as a writer and photographer, and much like infamous Japanese director Yon Fan ([i]Peony Pavilion[/i], [i]Colour Blossoms[/i]) he seems overly concerned with deep meaning and weighty emotional significance to the point of utterly undermining any kind of suspension of disbelief. The opening scenes before Cat flees her dysfunctional family, where she confronts her stepfather over peeping at her and her sister while they bathe, fail to pass muster on any level. Even taking into account the possibility the subtitles aren't conveying every possible nuance in the dialogue, none of the cast behave like human beings in any sense of the words. The acting ranges from stilted and lifeless to melodrama so broad it comes across as almost hysterically funny.
And matters only get worse. Cat and her boyfriend's life in the big city bears little or no resemblance to reality, day-to-day concerns dismissed or glossed over in favour of big, searching questions that fall utterly flat both as a result of the painfully earnest writing and the inappropriate delivery. 'What is love?” Cat asks Liam. “Giving of yourself. Always giving”, he answers, the film never bothering to address the slightly disturbing interpretation love could happily involve thanklessly working yourself to death to keep a relationship alive. The movie reaches a point where every line seems designed to top the previous one for sheer ludicrous incongruity. Liam's military service (which he seems to spend largely sat at the foot of a wall moping) gives rise to one particular plot twist that involves what has to rank as some of the most stupefyingly implausible dialogue ever delivered on screen. None of the subsequent romantic options play any better, all of them archetypes through and through without any kind of backstory or fine detail to mark them out as real people.
Plot threads are casually discarded. The narrative jumps ahead in time without any explanation. Characters drastically alter the way they behave without apparent justification, if they even bother reacting to narrative developments at all. People drop loaded statements into casual conversation as if Leading Lee were frantically waving cue cards at them just off camera.
Yet everyone tries, despite the overriding impression every member of both cast and crew has their own idea about what film they're trying to make. From the moment the overly portentous score starts to boom over the credits it's obvious people put a lot of effort into [i]My So-Called Love[/i], but the viewer ends up torn between laying into the players for not being able to make anything out of the tools at their disposal or Leading Lee himself for being seemingly oblivious to what his film was coming together as. Or not coming together, rather – the film never achieves any kind of impact or impetus beyond the car-crash fascination with seeing precisely where the whole mess is headed next.
There are one or two moments of striking visual imagery, particularly the village behind the opening credits and repeated use of a wind farm near one stretch of coastline, but nothing to suggest Leading Lee has any idea what he has on his hands, let alone what to do with it. The hideous editing invariably destroys any impact these images carry within minutes of them appearing. There are moments where you almost care for these characters, despite how ridiculous they are, but inevitably the next big dramatic moment sours you on them all over again. The cast have done far better than this elsewhere but the viewer wouldn't necessarily realise this – [i]My So-Called Love[/i] is a mess far beyond, say, Western action cinema excess or arthouse indulgence. There is [b]no[/b] evidence of any real talent on display here, no thrill, no tension, no moment that holds [b]any[/b] kind of genuine emotion for more than a few seconds at a time, if that. There is no reason to watch beyond rubbernecking at just how wide of the mark someone can land when they go into creating a feature film believing their own press.
One can only wonder if Barbie Hsu heading straight back to her comfort zone with legendary producer of cheap and cheerful schlock Wong Jing (for the forthcoming [url=https://screenanarchy.com/site/view/trailer-for-zany-chinese-comedy-on-his-majestys-secret-service/][i]On His Majesty's Secret Service[/i][/url]) can be taken as an indication she was well aware of how horribly, horribly wrong [i]My So-Called Love[/i] was going. Regardless, it has to rank among the worst films released in years, Taiwanese, Asian or otherwise, and is practically impossible to recommend.