Looking Old Age In The Eyes

I feel blessed that the excellent Chinese movie A Simple Life gets screened in AMC Theatres in Toronto, albeit long overdue. This is, of course, a movie directed and played by baby boomers -renowned Hong Kong director Ann Hui and her lead actors: Deanie Ip and Andy Lau. Ip has retired from the big screen in 2000, but her re-emerged role in this film deservingly won her the Best Actress Award at The Venice Film Festival and the Golden Horse Award in Asia.

So many film critics have already written in praise of the movie. I agree with everything they said - a masterpiece on character development; the rhythms of shared routine and intimacy that bind the lead characters; the simplicity of everyday aging life and loneliness but treated with delightful humour and exquisite little details. There's no explosive emotions or violence, but all boomers can be empathetic with the relationship between the master and the servant and the role reversal when Ah Tao suffered from a stroke - in old age, the servant becomes the served.

I was warned by a friend that I might find the movie depressing, as most of it was shot inside an old-age home. Instead, I just find the film extremely funny and nostalgic. This was the first movie in which Lau and Ip reunited on the big screen in 23 years and the two real-life godmother and godson once again remind me of how Andy Lau rose to his megastar fame - he played Ip's son in a TV cop drama when he was still a rookie actor some 35 years ago.

The movie also reminds me of my birthplace Hong Kong and all the veteran actors and directors whom I grew up with. I think this movie is best appreciated by a Cantonese-speaking audience because most of the idioms and colloquialisms would be lost on Mandarin-speaking or English-speaking audiences. This would be a great movie not only to go with boomer friends, but you should take your sons and daughters who, I hope, would learn a few valuable lessons and morals.

Not Enough Passion To Be a Love Tragedy

Some critics found The Deep Blue Sea exquisite while others considered it boring and slow. If it's the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, I just don't think the passion is strong enough in the movie to warrant either.

At its best, The Deep Blue Sea is an art piece. But most of the time, it's slow and unnecessarily pedantic. Sir William Collyer, played by Simon Russell Beale, is not brutally boring enough as a husband for Rachel Weisz's Lady Collyer to have an affair. Lady Hester Collyer's love object, former RAF pilot Freddie (played by Tom Hiddleston), is not good looking or young enough to deserve the whole big fuss.

Similar to a lot of other British movies, the whole film was shot in such darkness (a la Tinkle Tailor Soldier Spy) that if you don't pay attention, you'll fall asleep. But unlike other film critics, I do like the excerpts from Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto, written in 1939, as the main musical score for the movie. But the music also adds to the whole conclusion for the flick - a lot of style but not enough substance.

The only redeeming grace is, of course, Rachel Weisz, who not only looks magnificent in this 1950s period drama, but plays the role of the naive and melancholic Hester so extremely well!

Reason sounds stronger than love and passion in the content of The Deep Blue Sea. In the words of the mean mother-in-law, Hester should choose 'guarded enthusiasm' instead of 'passion'. Even the landlady of Freddie's London flat advised her that true love is really about taking care of your aging and dying partner rather than indulging in the young flesh of the moment!

The cast of this movie is all blue blood in acting - both Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston are Cambridge University graduates and Simon Russell Beale has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation." But what a waste of talents in this flat movie!