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Hong Kong super popstar
Jacky Cheung returns to the Jade screen after a rest of seven years.
Apart from a very small cameo in Anna Magdalena, his previous film
was the Jet Li actioner High Risk (1995). So it is with great anticipation
to watch a film like July Rhapsody, which had received good critical
reviews and had won three awards at the 2002 Hong Kong Film Awards.
Jacky Cheung plays Lam Yiu Kwok, a forty-year-old
secondary school teacher who teaches Chinese Literature. He had
married his wife, Chan Man Ching, when they were in their late teens,
and they have two teenage sons. But Lam is having a mid-life crisis:
he is disillusioned with his job, finds it difficult talking to
his younger son, thinks his wife still has feelings for someone
else, and to make matters worse, one of his students is in love
with him.
Woo Choi Lam (Karena Lam) is a seventeen year
old schoolgirl who finds herself falling in love with her teacher,
Lam Yiu Kwok. The reason why is never really explained, but it is
this innocent puppy love that makes her character so wonderfully
mysterious and alluring. Lam doesn't realise it at first, although
he soon finds her insistent stalking a little distracting, but gradually,
he warms to her girl-like charms.
Although Lam loves his wife very much, he knows
that there is a problem between them that should be solved. This
very problem has been in their lives for the past 20 years, and
was the foundation of their very marriage. Gradually, the incident
is revealed, but Lam often think about the what-ifs. He knows in
his mind that if he hadn't married so young, he would now have a
very promising career.
It is this self-doubt and self-criticism that
Lam begins his relationship with Woo, because she gives him his
youth back. With her, he is able to do the things that he never
had the chance to do before, yet he also knows that what he is doing
is really wrong.
July Rhapsody is one of the best films I have
seen in the past year. There are so many layers in the film that
it is hard not to admire the content, the emotions, and the pure
drama of it all. The strongest point is obviously the performances
of the cast, which I feel is absolutely spot on, especially Jacky
Cheung's discontented Lam and Karena Lam's sultry Woo.
Both of these performances were worthy of winning
the HK film awards, yet only Karena Lam had won (twice), and I feel
that Cheung's performance was much better than Stephen Chow's in
Shaolin Soccer. But really, the star of the film was undoubtedly
Karena Lam, whose charisma and pure class was what made the film
work so well. Her schoolgirl affectation was simply stunning, from
her movement, her expression, her voice, her visual bearing, to
every single idiosyncratic element, makes her that much perfect.
In reality, who could really refuse an offer from such a girl?
Director Ann Hui confirms her position as one
of HK's most celebrated directors with July Rhapsody. She is able
to bring us a simple tale of a man losing his way in such a dramatic
fashion, and the pacing of the film is spot on. Credit to her for
making Rhapsody with an aura of innocence surrounding it, and I
thank her for implying most of the incidents in the film instead
of forcing it upon us, which makes it even more powerful as we imagine
it ourselves what had happened between the lines.
As you can see from this review, I really
love this film, and I would recommend it wholeheartedly to you all.
In a way, Rhapsody has similar overtones to American Beauty, both
have their protaganists in a mid-life crisis, and both fall for
a teenage schoolgirl. Yet while Beauty is more ostentatious, Rhapsody
is sublime.
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