The initial conceit of LOVE AT SEVENTH SIGHT is so painfully formulaic that it almost doesn't need summarizing. Taiwanese actor Mike Hu plays Hong Kong lad Ziqi, a film sound engineer, who travels to Beijing to record some genuine sounds of silence. Almost immediately he is offered a lift by the beautiful, yet elusive Bei Ye (Li Xiao Lu) in her smartly renovated camper van. She is headed in the same direction on some impulsive journey of escape and, well, he needs a ride. True to form, there is a simmering attraction, yet something is not quite right and before you can say "terminal illness", we learn that tragedy is only a few precious moments away.
So far, so like every other Asian teen romance. But around the forty-minute mark, writer/director Alfred Cheung (who also has a cameo role as Bei Ye's father) begins playing with his audience's preconceptions and his story evolves beyond its all-too-familiar genre trappings into territory most famously trodden by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO.
Barely halfway into the film, Bei Ye, shuffles off her slight mortal coil, leaving Ziqi to return to Hong Kong in a state of desolate mourning. He spends the next six months lying on his sofa, not shaving and leaving the TV on. Then one day, drawn to the window by a trio of Filipina maids singing cheerily as they scrub down their employer's Mercedes, Ziqi spies a girl on the streets of Central who looks uncannily like Bei Ye and he sets off to confront her, only to discover a series of startling revelations.
Plot-wise, it is better not to know any more than that, because what Cheung attempts to do is fairly unique and, for the most part, successful. It might be giving the film too much credit to call LOVE AT SEVENTH SIGHT a deconstructionist terminal romance, but it does poke fun at a number of well-worn, yet entirely expected, clichés, both in terms of character development and plot machinations. Ultimately, however, the film can't help but give way to the crushing burden of unconsummated adolescent yearning and its finale is as predictable as expected, even with a last minute final jibe at tradition that was all-too-easy to swallow in the wake of so many other similar stories.
Mike Hu, despite commanding a legion of adoring tweens at the premiere, is fairly lousy, never instilling much depth or realism to his role of pining, puppy dog Ziqi, and seems to act more with his hair than anything else, evoking a young Ekin Cheng in the process. Li Xiao Lu, on the other hand, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Zhou Xun, does a better job in what is essentially a double role. But the real credit, if the film deserves any, should go to writer/director Alfred Cheung, for at least attempting something different and achieving a couple of genuinely surprising moments in a genre that too often lacks any real plausibility or imagination.
Cross published in bc Magazine (Hong Kong)