The biggest hit Chinese musical ever, "Perhaps Love" (released in 2005, though not making it to North America for another two years) has been described as "Bollywood meets Bob Fosse" and "an Asian 'Moulin Rouge.'" I'd question the "Bob Fosse," but the choreography in "Perhaps Love" was done by Bollywood veteran Farah Kan, the main roles are played by a Japanese-Taiwanese, a northern Chinese, a Cantonese, and a Korean (and writer-director Peter Chan Ho-Sun was born in Thailand).

For me, dancing is more important than singing in musicals. In my survey of what I think are the greatest movie musicals, I also noted that most of the best musicals involve people putting on shows (usually musicals). I am tempted to say that "Perhaps Love" is a love story involving a romantic triangle who are making a movie musical centered on a romantic triangle.

"Perhaps Love" is like Baz Luhrman's "Moulin Rouge" (and Rob Marshall's "Chicago") in cutting up the outlandish dance numbers into tiny pieces, so that the flow of the dancers is missing. The jump cuts in "Perhaps Love" are just as obtrusive. And IMO the songs are not as good. (This is not because they are sung in Chinese languages; for me the most powerful movie song rendering ever is in Chen Kaige's "Life on a String.")

I wouldn't say that "love is all around" in "Perhaps Love." The final (and title) song suggests that love is only certain in retrospect (the only true paradises are lost ones, as M. Proust wrote). The main -- or at least the basic, underlying -- storyline is about pained remembering and oblivious not remembering of a youthful romance.

It occurred in Beijing ten years before the movie's present (when the former lovers are making the movie within the movie). Sun Na (Zhou Xun) and Lin Jian Dong (Takeshi Kaneshiro) were students in film school in Beijing together. She (Sun) was expecting him (Lin) to become a film director and to make movies starring her. However, he did not make it to directing films. One snowy day she left. She became the muse of a sort of Chinese Jean-Luc Godard, Nie Wen (Jacky Cheung) whose most recent films have flopped. He has agreed to make a movie musical about circus performers starring Sun... and Lin, who has become a movie superstar in Hong Kong. And taking on the part of the circus ringmaster who watches the romance between Sun and Lin (re)bloom. In both movies, The Show Must Go On (as Jim Broadbent sang in "Moulin Rouge"...)

The relationship between Nie and Sun is on the rocks. In both the movie within a movie and the movie about the moviemakers, Lin is agonizingly fixated on the past and the love of his life (for Sun) and she brushes him off. In the movie within a movie she has amnesia; in the movie about moviemakers she attempts to convince him that she long ago ceased to love him. And in both, he refuses to accept even the possibility of not winning her back.

Director Nie agonizes about the attraction he observes and that the resurrection of his movie career requires that he stoke. (That is, the electricity between Lin and Sun in his movie needs to be convincing.) And observing it all -- in multiple parts with some outlandish costumes -- is the tall Ji Jin-Hee

With both a movie within a movie and flashbacks in which little (or less) attempt was made to have Sun and Lin look different, and the very frequent cuts, it is easy to get dizzy. (Watching it on DVD not only allows going back to watch a scene again, but to stop and take a few deep breaths!) There is a lot going on -- not just loves and losses, but art and commerce... and trapeze acts.

"Perhaps Love" is not nearly as confusing as "The Ashes of Time" (in which Jacky Cheung starred) and the stylization mostly works (as did that in "Moulin Rouge" for me). I was somewhat frustrated not to have much chance to see the choreography except as editing choreography. I was unimpressed with the pop songs (except the last one in the movie within a movie, sung by Cheung).

I enjoyed the two fifteen-minute "making of" featurettes, the first about making a musical, the second about making the love story. The reclusive superstar Kaneshiro Takeshi participated -- looking different from his screen role(s). There are also multiple trailers, a music video (subtitled in Chinese, but not in English) of Cheung singing the title song, and some unnarrated "behind the scenes" footage. A 5-star DVD package! but I'd rate the movie itself 4 star.

The Talent

I don't think I'd ever seen Ji Jin-Hee before. He is a Korean television star (A Jewel in the Palace) who learned Chinese for the movie.

Kaneshiro Takeshi, born in Taiwan with a Japanese father, first came to my attention as the canned-pineapple eating policeman in Wong Karwai's "Chunking Express" He had starred in Wong's "Fallen Angles" earlier, but I saw that later. He has also played tragic lovers in "Turn Right, Turn Left" and (most memorably!) in Zhang Yimou's "The House of Flying Daggers." He has also starred in Chan's "Warlords" (which I have on DVD but haven't watched yet) and Chan's forthcoming production of Ha Jin's Waiting. (BTW, he sings but does not dance in "Perhaps Love"-- though he has some swimming pool choreography...)

Jacky Cheung is a Hong Kong superstar pop singer and actor. He costarred with Tony Leung in John Woo's "Bullet to the Head" as well as in Wong Karwai's "Ashes of Time," and with Jet Li in Tsui Hark's "Once Upon a Time in China."

Although I don't think much of her voice Xun Zhou is a successful Chinese pop singer. She has starred in many of the best Chinese movies of this millennium, including Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (as the seamstress), Beijing Bicycle, A West Lake Moment, and Suzhou River (and had a supporting role in "The Emperor and the Assassin" back in the previous millennium).

Cinematographers Peter Pau and Christopher Doyle are perhaps even more famous here than the movie's stars and director. Pau won an Oscar for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and shot such visual feasts as "Phantom Lover" and "The Bride with White Hair." Doyle has IMO done much to make the reputation of Wong Karwai (Chunking Express, In the Mood for Love, 2046). as well as contributing mightily to Zhang Yimou's "Hero" and Chen Kaige's "Temptress Moon," plus "The White Countess," and the remake of "The Quiet American."

Peter Chan attended film school at UCLA and worked as an assistant director to John Woo. Among the highly regarded films he has directed are "He's a Woman, She's a Man," "Comrades: Almost a Love Story," and "The Warlords" (with the adaptation of Waiting starring Cheung forthcoming).

© 2008, Stephen O. Murray




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