夜。上海 (The Longest Night in Shanghai)

[renzhe]

IMDB - Wikipedia

A romantic Chinese/Japanese drama/comedy starring Vicky Zhao and Masahiro Motoki.

I have to admit that I was tricked into watching this one with my girlfriend. We were scanning some movies, and this one looked like "Lost in Translation" set in a moody, raining Shanghai night. So I thought "great", and decided to watch it.

Essentially, it is about a lively Shanghai taxi driver whose love interest is marrying somebody else on the same night when she gets stuck with a lost Japanese stylist without his wallet who doesn't speak any Chinese and doesn't know in which hotel he is staying. They learn to communicate despite the language barrier. You can guess the rest.

Unfortunately, it's nowhere near as good "Lost in Translation". In fact, it is often downright awful, especially when it's trying to be funny. Also, it's a romantic comedy, and I hate romantic comedies.

On the positive side, the two main actors did well with the script they were given, and the shots of Shanghai are really beautiful. It's also interesting to see four languages used throughout the movie: Mandarin, Japanese, Shanghainese and English. It really threw me off because they switch often and you have to read the subtitles, so I ended up reading the subtitles even for the Mandarin parts.

Has anyone else seen this? It might be a good choice for a romantic evening with a special person, if you can stomach romantic comedies.

[skylee]

I like romantic comedies. But mainland ones? I don't think I am that interested. (But I watched 非常勿擾 at the hairdresser's and I think it is quite good, though it's not really a comedy.)