So, back to the subject of dodgy choices Comrade Wang makes in his film career. I thought I’d offer a few thoughts on his writing/directing debut, Love in Disguise (爱情通告), which I finally watched during my brief stint in China this summer. It is, by just about any measure, a pretty prosaic film. If you can endure the worst of the overacting in the first half hour or so, you might be able to get a few laughs in, though I warn you now some will inevitably be at Leehom’s expense.
First and foremost, let me express my extreme skepticism that Leehom himself would go see this film. I mean, if he didn’t co-write it, if he hadn’t directed it, and if he wasn’t starring in it – if it was just the latest release in Taiwan or China starring Liu Yifei and, say, our new professional actor friend Wu Chun – I cannot imagine a 35 year old man thinking this is the thing to see on a Saturday night. And what’s he doing making a movie he and his friends in all likelihood wouldn’t want to see?
My first problem stems from him being 35 (well, 34 at the time it came out)… and being in a role that has him disguising himself to infiltrate a Shanghai music school and developing a crush on a coed. It’s classic fan service – he’s playing out the fantasies his fans have in their heads on the big screen. But I have spent a disproportionate number of my days on college campuses, and the idea of a 34 year old pretending to be a young student to charm a pretty 19 year old kind of creeps me out.
The second issue is that most of the actors in the film – again, in the first half hour in particular, but Leehom for most of the piece – seem to subscribe to the Ella Chen school of overacting. Ah, Ella. I cannot tell you how many times people have told me that I should watch the Taiwanese drama Hana Kimi. I got so many promises that I’d love it that I actually bought it (in China, at least, so I didn’t spend much on it), despite my dislike for all things Fahrenheit/S.H.E. Between what a terribly wooden actor Wu Chun is, and what a painfully, desperately exaggerated performance Ella gives mugging for the camera, I’ve never gotten through more than a few episodes – and I watched those a few minutes at a time to endure them. It hurts to watch her act – you’re afraid she’s going to pull something, and you want to smack her, so you’re in serious danger of smacking your television and hurting yourself instead.* Well, that’s what the acting is like early in this movie.
Beyond that, the premise is so breathtakingly stupid I kept waiting – in vain – for the punchline.** Leehom and his band’s guitar player disguise themselves as goat herders from the totally made-up, faraway village of Dingzhou. But the characters in the movie aren’t really in on the joke – they dress up, even walk around with a live goat (!), express momentary doubt then become thrilled that no one can recognize them. We all can see how ludicrous it is that these people would accept this disguise, commit to using it, and then keep wearing it for weeks on end after enrolling in the Shanghai music school Liu Yifei attends. The problem is that they can’t seem to see it, which means that Leehom’s character is apparently someone with a sub-eighty IQ, and that makes him a lot less likable. The fact that no one recognizes him or questions the disguise, even when he sings (and this after they’d all gone to see his alter ego the pop star in concert), means that actually, EVERYONE in the movie is a blithering idiot. If you’re going to have your characters attempt something so outlandish, you have to at least let them recognize that it’s an absurd ploy.
And yet, for all that, they got me to laugh a few times. At the beginning it was embarrassed laughter at how far Leehom was willing to go for a chuckle, but there were a few good gags. The one I dreaded the most was in the preview: in classic Leehom fashion, while in disguise he hears people speculating that his pop star self is gay, and he gets all indignant denying it. Hey, he’s written two songs denying it, you had little doubt he’d work it into a movie at some point. But there was a twist – when he claims later to be able to get his pop star self to an event, everyone wonders how the lowly goat herder would have the pop star’s phone number. “Oh, he gave it to me – I met him in the bathroom,” he says, unthinkingly. “So he really IS gay!” a character squeals, and the payoff is perfect. Finally, finally, Leehom manages to poke a little fun at himself. If he had done more of that – and not just this wacky goat-herder nonsense – it could have been a much better comedy.
You do get used to his goat-herder garb, and while it doesn’t become easier to accept, it is at least easier to ignore. There are a few more funny bits, especially during the fan concert; the scenes of Leehom trying to go back and forth between being in the audience with the girl in one persona and being onstage in the other has been done too many times to be really funny, but having another person from his invented Dingzhou in the audience was worth a giggle, and Khalil Fong’s bewildered cameo absolutely killed me when he filled in with a confused, “I, ah, guess I’m the special guest?”
From there, though, it spiraled out of control into a painfully heavy-handed message about not losing traditional music in the pursuit of pop, and finding ways to incorporate the two. Seriously, it makes Beginning of the Great Revival look downright subtle, and when you can out-propagandize the Chinese Communist Party, it’s time to take a step back and consider easing up a bit on the lessons.
If you’ve seen any number of romantic comedies or – especially – East Asian Idol dramas, then you’ve seen it all before, but this has something on the Hana Kimis of the world: it’s mercifully short. I’ll go one step further, as well – I bought and listened to Leehom’s accompanying album, The 18 Martial Arts before I saw the movie and thought it just so-so. The movie acts as a great advertisement for the songs, though, and I found that I liked the whole album better after seeing the movie, even without being all that impressed by the latter. Maybe the problem is perspective: don’t think of it as a film, but as a 98-minute music video disguised as a film. Suddenly, it’s stunningly successful.
_______
* I have a second, altogether different issue with this one that ensured I would not like it, which is that Ella’s character is just plain dumb. She seems to go for female characters that are stupid, clueless, and helpless, devoid of self-esteem, and always opposite a handsome, male lead who’s smart and infinitely more capable. What a horrible example to be setting for the young women of East Asia.
** I’m choosing to ignore the whole “magical visions of butterflies” sub-plot here, because I found that even less comprehensible than the goat.
