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My So-Called Love

My So-Called Love Barbie Hsu Hsi-yuan, Eddie Peng Yu-yan, Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan, Easton Tung Ming-hsiang Director: Leading Lee

The publicity literature touts My So-Called Love thus: 'After Cape No7, Taiwan's most talked about movie of 2008.'

But if moviegoers are indeed talking, it's probably to register their disbelief over the artsy affectations of this pretentious melodrama about so-called love in Taipei.

Barbie Hsu, whose creditable performance in Connected earned her a best actress nomination in the upcoming Hong Kong Film Awards, does what she can with the role of Cat, a lovelorn woman who strives for a decade to find the man of her dreams.

The movie's vapid machinations prevent Cat from attaining her true love. But Hsu gives it her all and gains sympathy for her plight if not her character's.

My So-Called Love marks the feature debut of music video and commercial director Leading Lee, who displays a pleasant visual sensibility at odds with the emotional artifice of the picture.

In the course of 10 years, during which none of the principals noticeably age, Cat goes from naive schoolgirl to jaded businesswoman, with few of the psychological repercussions over the hand that fate - and the scriptwriters - have dealt her.

That Cat's ordeal comes across as so false is made more surprising by the fact that the story is based on true events in the life of author-composer Hsu Wei-ching.

It's not that Cat doesn't lead a potentially fascinating existence.

After all, her beaux are a diverse group including a sexually confused virgin (Eddie Peng), a seductive charlatan (Joseph Chang) and a sincere younger man (Easton Tung) who - in the film's most novel touch - is not only hearing-impaired but played by a hearing-impaired actor.

In the end, Cat deems him too good to be saddled with someone like her when the reality is that a woman with Cat's attributes should never have been saddled with such a contrived scenario.

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