A Beautiful Life

Andrew Lau

The story: Outgoing Li Peiru (Shu Qi) works as a property agent in Beijing. She and shy copper Fang Zhendong (Liu Ye) meet at a karaoke joint one night when she throws up on him after one too many drinks. Thus begins a tangled relationship set against the backdrop of an economic downturn, a terminal illness and more boozing.

There needs to be a moratorium on Shu Qi acting drunk. She was drunk in Hou Hsiao- Hsien’s Millennium Mambo (2001) and drunk again in Feng Xiaogang’s If You Are The One (2008).

Is there some clause in her contract that stipulates she needs to get all boozy and tipsy in every other film?

The character of Peiru seems at first to be a retread of If You Are The One’s hard-drinking and deeply unhappy Xiaoxiao. It is as if the investors wanted a version of that huge box-office hit with a more traditionally good-looking leading man in the form of Liu Ye as opposed to the bald and older Ge You.

And one with more scenarios of Shu Qi inebriated. Director Andrew Lau pretty much lets her run amok in one drunken scene after another as she flails about and rails about how unhappy she is.

Perhaps Lau, who is best known for the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002-2003), should stick to thrillers and keep away from romantic dramas.

Forget subtlety as the opposites- attract angle is worked to death here. She is outgoing and brash and having an affair with her boss; he is shy and straight as an arrow and chastely alone after his wife left him. She lives in a cold and alienating modern high-rise apartment; he lives in a hutong or narrow alley, with its rustic down-to-earth charm.

True, Peiru does have reasons to be unhappy but the way her problems are revealed does not make her sympathetic, merely wearying.

Liu, who has done good work in superior movies such as Lan Yu (2001) and City Of Life And Death (2009), does his darnedest to emote but is wasted in this muddled melodrama.

It is hard to work out the attraction between the two leads when Peiru is nice to Zhendong only when she needs something from him and the only thing he can articulate is that he likes hearing her call his name.

Then again, he has something of a messiah complex and Peiru needs plenty of rescuing, so maybe they are right for each other after all.

He is devoted to taking care of his somewhat simple-minded brother Zhencong (former Olympic diving champion Tian Liang) and it is the latter’s romance with a mute girl that is the more moving tale here.

There is an abrupt switch from unconvincing romance to manipulative tearjerker in the last 30 minutes of the film.

And the ridiculous ending leaves Life with an aftertaste that is anything but beautiful.

(ST)