Bearing some semblance to Moulin Rouge!, Perhaps Love is nevertheless very Chinese. Some of today's Chinese vernacular become indelible thanks to the characters. 文青, (short for 文艺青年), is a collective term for artsy youth. Cultured, petit bourgeois, slightly disenfranchised, they are ardently interested in careers in the entertainment and creative writing industries. 北漂 (bei piao, literally a northbound floater) is a 文青, typically from either humbler background or smaller towns, bravely uproots him or herself to migrate to Beijing (北京) chasing the dream. Incidentally, there's also 横漂(heng piao), a person practically on standby 24/7 for auditions, gigs as extras at China's own Hollywood 横店, an entire Eastern town, 2.5 hour train ride from Shanghai, made of clusters of filming bases with permanent thematic sets.
Our characters are the essence of the current generation of artsy youth who strives for a life less ordinary, less programmed than what their parents had lived in the pre-capitalistic China. Through the dreams of these floating artsy youth, modern Chinese consumerism is finally emerging.
I'm not a fan of musicals but have always been a fan of works by director Peter Chan (陈可辛, Chen Kexin in pinyin).
Chan attended college in the states. But after taking his first summer job in Hong Kong as director John Woo (吴宇森) 's translator and key grip in the early 80s, he dropped out. The rest is history.
Chan has the observation and patience of an anthropologist. One of his early works Comrades: Almost in Love, made in 1996, is a classic depicting the 97 HK syndrome, is a film to which I will dedicate a separate post one day.
The cast is made of three well-respected actors with singing background. One of them, Jacky Cheung (张学友), with a stature in HK's Canton Pop so significant that in Asia, his clout and fame easily rivals that of U2's Bono. The impossibly handsome Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) and the very talented Zhou Xun (周迅) also star.
Chinese subtitles. Enjoy the movie.
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