Ai zuozhan
Director: Pou-Soi Cheang
Writer: Kam-Yuen Szeto
Cast: Eason Chan, Niki Chow, Carl Ng, Zhiwen Wang
Part of: Viennale, Soi Cheang Tribute

Plot:
Yui (Eason Chan) and Ching (Niki Chow) are a quite normal couple who have their ups and downs. They’re about to fulfill Ching’s lifelong dream and head on a trip to Europe. Unfortunately when they want to get into the car to drive to the airport, said car is gone. They get into a fight, Ching decides to head to the airport and Yui to go to the police to get his car back. But then Yui stumbles upon his car. Unfortunately, Wah (Zhiwen Wang) – who stole his car – is still there and decides that he can use Yui. So suddenly Yui finds himself in a nightmare of violence, kidnapping and robbery.

Love Battlefield did not impress me. Though it started off fine and has some nice supporting characters, I just never really cared about Yui or Ching.

Soi Cheang starts off with a fast forward through Yui’s and Ching’s relationship that is absolutely brilliant. In five minutes you get years of relationship and you somehow feel like you’ve lived through it all and get the entire depth. That was some wonderful writing and filmmaking right there.

And I also liked their friends. Their friendship felt very real, too. And the mechanic with the supersexy voice (I’m not sure, but I think he was played by Ho-Yin Wong. Unfortunately the infos on imdb are very sketchy and I can’t remember the character’s name either) was very funny.

But when the actual plot started, I began to lose my interest. I didn’t care what happened to Yui and the whole thing stretched my suspense of disbelief anyway. By the time we came to the ending, it was completely gone: the blood transfusion that’s so desperately needed, the underwater scenes and the bad guy and his wife – all of that made me want to throw stuff at screen.

I keep waiting for another Soi Cheang movie to be as good as Yi ngoi, but somehow he just doesn’t get there anymore.

Summarising: it just really didn’t work for me.