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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film
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Stephy Tang and Edward Ma in a still from “Twelve Days” (category IIB, Cantonese), directed by Aubrey Lam.
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Review | Twelve Days movie review: bleak marriage drama starring Stephy Tang and Edward Ma a pale echo of writer-director Aubrey Lam’s hit 2000 romance Twelve Nights

  • Writer-director Aubrey Lam Oi-wah, of Twelve Nights fame, returns with Twelve Days – a thematic sequel to her debut film 23 years after its original release
  • The sequel has none of the sparkle and charm of the original, and the married-couple-on-the-edge played by Stephy Tang and Edward Ma are sadly one-dimensional
Asian cinema: Hong Kong film
Edmund Lee
Edmund Lee
Why you can trust SCMP

2/5 stars

Twenty-three years after her debut, Twelve Nights, saw romance blossom and fizzle out between a pair of fickle lovers, writer-director Aubrey Lam Oi-wah returns with another relationship drama in 12 chapters – this time focusing on the disintegration of a marriage almost as soon as it begins.

Lam’s 2000 film combined a cynical view on dating with memorable performances from up-and-coming pop stars, with fireworks sparking between the lovers, played by Eason Chan Yik-shun and Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi, as they tussled for control in their short-lived affair.

The same cannot be said of this thematic sequel, whose story was developed from Lam’s short film Old Peak Road from the 2008 omnibus feature A Decade of Love. Twelve Days is a one-sided ordeal about what it means for a woman to have picked an awful human being for a husband.
In its opening chapter (“Day 1”) that is largely played for laughs, we are introduced to flight attendant Jeannie (Stephy Tang Lai-yan) and her great love Simon (Edward Ma Chi-wai) as they brave a typhoon to meet at a pier – instead of just calling one another to avoid the chaos – before they run into one obstacle after another to find a room.

While there are better reasons to get married than getting to have a private space of their own, it does not stop the pair from doing just that on “Day 2”, which concludes with Simon punching his cousin (Peter Chan Charm-man) at the wedding banquet after the latter has made a mess of taking their photos.

(From left) Peter Chan, Edward Ma and Stephy Tang in a still from “Twelve Days”.

The film then turns into a humourless two-hander and it is all downhill from there. Simon blames Jeannie for putting pressure on him to be home for dinner on “Day 3”; sex has become a formality by “Day 4”; she intentionally loses at bowling just to soothe his fragile ego on “Day 5; he sends her on errands and casually cancels their anniversary celebration on “Day 6”.

Twelve Days will intrigue viewers not for its story but as a challenge to find any redeeming qualities in Simon. It is ironic to see Tang graduate from all those mean-spirited romances directed by Patrick Kong, only to end up playing a housewife as pathetic and helpless as Jeannie.

When pressed by an audience member at a post-screening talk, Lam reasoned that she was picturing Simon as a male chauvinist – a trait she believed many women are attracted to. But Ma’s portrayal is one-dimensional and reduces Simon to an obnoxious man-child, while Jeannie’s struggle is no more than a masochistic nightmare.

Stephy Tang (left) and Edward Ma in a still from “Twelve Days”.
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