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Reviews
Ai Hen Lan (2011)
Promising and Disappointing
I was interested in getting this film because, on paper, it sounds like it has the ingredients of a thought-provoking, delicate film. It focuses on a number of morally dubious love affairs - murderous, incestuous, lecherous, exploitative and unrequited in turn. There's an exposed sibling affair, a love triangle resulting in vengeful murder, a 'The Graduate' style older-woman seduction, a shy artist who lusts after and stalks his male model, a wedding sabotaged by a jealous ex-lover and the obligatory lesbian schoolgirl couple. Each story ends in tragedy, in a courtroom or with some ironic twist. To top it all off there are lots of controversial sex scenes, which, I thought, could only be a good thing.
It sounded like it must either be a daring dissection of forbidden love in China or thinly veiled pornography, neither of which would have been a loss in my mind. Sadly, however, it's neither of those things.
First, the sex scenes are jarringly explicit, to the extent that they cross over from movie sex and often become pornography. This is not a good thing. Movie sex scenes are wonderful and ever-popular because they're conservative, tastefully filmed, well-acted and character- driven, which actually makes them far more titillating than anything from an adult store. The sex scenes in 'Love Actually...Sucks!', however, are oddly shot, emotionless, drawn-out, too well-lit, too sudden, leave too little to the imagination and - most importantly - don't draw from or develop the characters. They're explicit but emotionally vacant: sex for sex's sake.
As they don't arouse the viewer or develop the characters or story, they're without purpose: sex in a film has to do at least one of these (preferably both). I was reminded of Tommy Wisseau's approach to love scenes in The Room. Like Wisseau, the director seemed eager to get nudity and sex scenes into the film at every available opportunity but seemed unable to make them serve the film's purpose, so instead they just float in and out of it, making you feel awkward.
Purpose is the second problem with the film. It's obvious what it is trying to do - point out the irony, the injustice and the sting of love gone wrong - but it's so thin on dialogue and hamstrung by its low budget that that message doesn't have a chance to unfold. The sparse dialogue (which switches disorientatingly into English at random moments for no situational reason) could have been compensated for by good screenplay and acting, but most of the actors are mediocre and token, and the screenplay is downright bizarre. Odd little scenes with no connection to the plot are interspersed between important ones; the mood changes gear suddenly and painfully with no pacing. Professional editing would have solved a lot of the film's problems.
It wouldn't fix the other inevitable side-effects of a low budget, though. The translation is hit-and-miss, with on-screen text messages and signs not being translated at all despite being central to the plot and subtitles containing typos, and there is one memorable special effects failure that breaks the immersion horribly. The picture quality is on par with 80s TV dramas like Taggart and there's a reliance on stationary cameras, with virtually no moving shots or close-ups.
There are still occasional touches of quality in the writing and direction that survive the budget and the translation, and I did laugh at a couple of moments and was genuinely affected by a couple more; and if you really want to see some Asian sex scenes, you could do worse (although you'll have to fast-forward through a lot of cityscapes, dining rooms and arguments). But there just isn't enough here to recommend this film - especially given the limited availability and steep prices. I got it out of curiosity and I won't watch it a second time.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
An enjoyable film that you may or may not find annoying and unnecessary
I'm not going to bother recounting the plot direction of The Matrix Reloaded. There are two reasons for this: first, it's up there in the 'plot' section, and second, it's actually not relevant to whether or not you like (or will like) this film. Allow me to explain.
Watched on its own merit, Reloaded isn't terrible; I dare say it's quite good. It even has little glimmers of genuine brilliance. The extraordinary backlash against it was less because of its actual content and more because of its existence at all: The Matrix was such a standalone unit in everybody's mind that any sequel could only have felt like a clunky shift from single film to serialisation. I tested my own intuitions on this by asking myself what would have constituted a good, non-disappointing sequel to The Matrix and realised that nothing would have met the mark. We were always going to feel that one of our modern classics had been violated to some degree.
There's much that's good about Reloaded, not least the exposition and development of the inner workings of the Matrix and AI. Smith's character gets a working over and becomes, if possible, even more interesting: the unsettling discrepancy between him and the other agents and his relentless, unfathomable-even-to-him desire for freedom from his own system and nature, are picked up from the first film and fleshed out, so to speak. There's a much broader cast and much of the supporting acting is excellent: Anthony Zerbe as the head Councillor in Zion stood out for me. His small, quiet scenes escaped my notice entirely at first, because first time round I was impatient to see more relevant things happening, but on repeat viewings they're welcome changes of pace.
However, there are teething problems. Tank (Marcus Chong), everybody's favourite operator in The Matrix and a generally fantastic character, has no appearance; his replacement is Link, played by Harold Perinneau, who I'd previously encountered playing Michael in Lost. He annoyed me more in this film than in that series, because whereas Lost shoehorned him into the Angry Black Man stereotype for a long time before giving him some real characterisation Reloaded seems content to ignore his abilities as an actor entirely and use him primarily for comic relief during tenser moments. Someone narrowly escapes death: back in his control room, Link squeals with relief; that sort of thing. It's a matter of personal taste, but I could have handled him being a more serious character.
I can only talk about acting for so long before mentioning Keanu Reeves, and it's that time again. Keanu is all over this film. He ramps it up here with love scenes, meditative dialogues (in which the aforementioned Anthony Zerbe, among others, sort of draws attention to Keanu by out-acting him considerably) and a small handful of one-liners. If you have a serious Keanu allergy, you simply won't be able to enjoy this film. Whereas in The Matrix his stiff, quiet style was in-character for the stiff, confused pre-enlightenment Neo, Reloaded has him take centre place as the hero of the film and if you can't stand watching him act then it's probably not worth your time. Personally, he's starting to grow on me.
I mentioned love scenes. Romance plays a bigger part in this film, which for my money is a bad thing because it's never really been the Wachowski brothers' forté. The first film had kind of a weird relationship with...relationships, with Neo and Trinity ostensibly falling in love after a few weeks of tense, brief exchanges in cars and between gunfights. Reloaded continues their bizarre, silent courtship. The subplot of their relationship is central to the story, so it pops up again and again, but it never seems to bring the film's better moments: wherever love is concerned, the script seems to take a break, and most of the romantic dialogue feels clunky and forced. You may experience it differently. But just so you're forewarned, you will hear Keanu Reeves utter the phrase, "I love you too damn much".
On a happier note, there are a ton of new antagonists, all of whom are extremely fun to watch; Morpheus takes a close-to-centre role again, getting a lot of the screen time and doing awesome things with it; and though it probably doesn't need mentioning, the action sequences are a joy to watch. Cars are crashed, lorries explode, bullets fly, doors melt in slow motion, and it's generally action fodder of the highest calibre. The sound effects team went a little overboard, with every slightest movement of a sword being punctuated by a 'shhiinng!' and that bassy bullet-time noise filling roughly half the film - the rest being filled by over-the-top orchestral climaxes - but it's not experience-breaking.
Ultimately, though, these are secondary concerns. Your ability to enjoy this film will hinge on whether or not you feel The Matrix *needed* a sequel. The comment I hear most often about Reloaded is that it just didn't need to happen; if that's how you feel about it, you'll probably find Reloaded annoying and disappointing, at least at first, despite the fact that it's really quite good. If that was your experience at the cinema and you haven't watched it since, though, give it another chance.