Love
Doze Niu
The story: Love – not to mention lust, hate and jealousy – is all around as the paths of eight characters cross. Budding film-maker Kai (Eddie Peng) is caught between best friends Ni (Amber Kuo) and Yijia (Ivy Chen). Ni’s father, rich businessman Lu (Doze Niu), is hooked up with the beautiful and unhappy Zoe (Shu Qi). Zoe has a fling with Mark (Mark Chao), who falls for China real estate agent Xiaoye (Zhao Wei). Eventually, an improbable romance develops between Zoe and Ni’s mechanic brother Kuan (Ethan Juan).

The opening montage is set to Taiwanese singer Hebe Tien’s Love!. The song, about a daisy chain of relationships ending in a failure to connect, sets up the film perfectly: “I love you, you love her, she loves her, she loves him/You love me, I love him, He loves him, He loves her.”
As if illustrating the song’s lyrics, director Doze Niu delivers a beautifully fluid tracking shot. The camera follows one character then another, quickly establishing the major players and their relationships with one another in one succinct take. Someone has been taking notes from American auteur Robert Altman.
With multiple storylines and a cast that is easy on the eyes, Niu has put together a film that has something for everyone. For youthful drama, there is the classic love triangle between two friends and a man, which is complicated by an unexpected pregnancy. Eddie Peng and Ivy Chen, previously paired in the romance Hear Me (2009), play friends who have to deal with the fallout of their one-night stand. Meanwhile, Amber Kuo’s Ni has to deal with her insecurities and pain over the betrayal of her boyfriend and best friend.
What could have been melodrama is handled with a light touch and bolstered by Peng’s winningly earnest Kai and the somewhat unexpected resolution.
Mark Chao and Zhao Wei are unconvincing as Mark and Xiaoye, bickering rivals eventually brought together by her cute little boy who is desperately looking for a father figure. This leaves the adorable five-year-old Lin Muran to steal the scene every time he appears.
The role of jaded socialite Zoe is a tad too familiar for Shu Qi. Thankfully, there is not too much wallowing in the ennui and unhappiness of a woman who has relationships with three different men.
And there is a tenderness to the tentative romance between Zoe and the sweet, stuttering Kuan, played by Ethan Juan in a reunion with his Monga director Niu.
For both Monga alumni, Love is a certainly a departure. Kuan cannot be more different from the macho and tragic Monk Juan played in the hit gangster drama of 2010, and Niu has certainly demonstrated his versatility as a film-maker with two such different films back-to-back.
The only question is whether audiences will embrace this as much as they did Monga.
(ST)