SYNOPSIS:
A lighthearted love story with a charming dose of fairy tale,
the delightful Vivian Hsu plays a girl who is completely enamoured
with shoes. One day, she meets her "Smiling Dentist"
prince charming and they seem destined for a happily ever after
journey..but do they?
MOVIE
REVIEW :
How
nice would it be, if everything in the world looked perfect
and pretty? Actually, you may want to think twice about that,
especially after watching this Taiwan film directed by newcomer
Robin Lee. Earlier
in March this year, Hong Kong Heavenly King Andy Lau led a
group of up-and-coming Asian directors under the Focus: First
Cuts banner to produce a series of high-definition feature
films. Kicking off the five features was this 94-minute flick
starring popular Taiwanese singer Vivian Hsu.
Hsu plays
Do Do, a sweet young thing who grew up listening to fairy
tales. The problem is that her happiness is not complete because
she cannot walk. After a miraculous operation on her feet,
she began loving shoes of all shapes and designs, and starts
buying lots of them.
She then
meets Smiley (played by another pretty face Duncan Lai), and
marries him. For the sake of domestic bliss, she gives up
buying shoes. As fate would have it, Do Do meets with an unfortunate
accident and her worldview is changed drastically.
Seems
like a hopeful and inspiring movie, you say? To some extent,
that is true. There is also no doubt a quirky film, but it
may be too quirky for some people. And alas, the movie also
seems to be more concerned about producing shot after shot
of picture-perfect images.
The aesthetics
in this movie are breathlessly good-looking. Wang Yi Fei,
who clinched the Best Art Direction honour at the 42nd Golden
Horse Awards, managed to make everything in the film look
so artistically astounding and flawlessly amazing. Every scene
is perfectly lighted, every prop is properly placed, every
colour in the movie is a joy to look at – it makes you
feel like you are watching a theater production.
Sadly,
that goes for the cast’s acting too. Hsu and Lai are
definitely eye candy, but their acting can be so stiff, or
to push it, theatrical, you may lose yourself in only the
film’s visuals and not care about its plot or the actors’
performances. But can this maintain your interest for 94 minutes?
Highly unlikely, we’d say.
So
while this movie may not be everyone’s cup of tea, credit
still goes to the fact that everything looks so good. And
to be fair, the last bit of salvation does come at the end
of the film, where you may break into a slight smile, knowing
the “revelation” of Do Do’s fate. That is,
if you are still paying attention to the screen.
SPECIAL
FEATURES :
This Code 3 DVD contains only a trailer for the movie.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
There is a choice of Mandarin
Dolby Digital 2.0 or Mandarin Dolby Digital 5.1, which does
not really matter because you will only be focusing on the
lush and pretty images, which are thankfully justified by
this DVD’s visual transfer.
MOVIE
RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by John Li
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