Starring: Jacky Cheung Hok-yau, Zhou Xun, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Ji Jin-hee
Director: Peter Chan Ho-sun
Category: IIA
Hong Kong's first bona fide musical in more than a decade, this dark romance deserves special notice as the year's most unique and luxurious pan-Asian production. A trend-bucking four-character drama, set in Shanghai and Beijing with a cast comprising top talent from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the mainland, and South Korea, Perhaps Love fails to soar, thanks to a lugubrious script, lacklustre score, and an approach that takes itself far too seriously.
The screenplay by Aubrey Lam Oi-wah and Raymond To Kwok-wai possesses a theatrical heavy-handedness in its delineation of the interpersonal conflicts on a Shanghai movie set. Superstar Sun Na (Zhou Xun) is a woman with a past she does her utmost to deny. But the past rears its bittersweet head when she finds herself cast opposite Lin Jiandong (Takeshi Kaneshiro), the lover who she dumped a decade earlier after he exhausted his usefulness as the first rung on her ladder to success. Incredibly, Lin has been wallowing in memories for 10 years.
Nie Wen (Jacky Cheung Hok-yau), the director of Perhaps Love's film within a film and Sun's current squeeze, is afraid of losing her. The only man whose heart seems to be safe is the not-quite-human Monty (South Korea's Ji Jin-hee, left), an angel who has the key for others to attain closure.