When I look Upon the Stars
Director: Dante Lam
Year: 1999
Rating: 6.5
This is a very light soufflé of a romantic
fable with just a tinge of bitter sweetness added to the recipe. If you are
not a Hsu Chi fan (which I clearly am) you should be warned that biting into
this confection could cause a hypoglycemic reaction. In this film she is
as sweet and adorable as a Christmas pudding, but I know there are some lost
bitter souls (!) out there that could react quite negatively to her performance.
A secretary asks Leo Koo when they will
go ut for a karaoke, he answers "when you get a face lift" Try that today
and go directly to HR. His boss played by Eric Tsang wants Leo to decide
which of his two mistresses he should keep. Work is getting oirritating and
he misses his girlfriend and so takes a vacation from his job in China
to visit his Chinese girlfriend, Anita Chan, who is living in Tokyo. They
have been together for six years, but he hasn’t seen her in many months.
This does not worry him though because he has their entire lives planned
out down to the number of rooms in their apartment and the number of kids.
When she doesn't react to all the gifts he brings, it should have been a
big fat clue that something is wrong. Sometimes life can’t be planned - things
just happen - and it turns out that she has fallen in love with his best
friend - Sam Lee - who is also living in Tokyo as a Manga artist. Even she
can’t explain why - Sam is irresponsible, unfaithful, has no ambition and
is totally goofy looking - but he makes her happy.
Leo can’t fathom this kind of illogical
thinking and feels terribly depressed that he has lost both his girlfriend
and his best friend at the same time. He finds solace though in the company
of Hsu Chi who is a waitress in a coffee shop with hopes of a career in modeling.
She feels sorry for him and asks him to be her boyfriend for 24 hours before
he returns to China. Poor guy. His consolation prize is Hsu Chi! He has to
be convinced to be her boyfriend for 24 hours. Hsu Chi! We have all been
blown off at some point in our lives, but very few of us have had a Hsu Chi
to fall back on. Why don’t things like this happen to me? Maybe because I
don’t live in a celluloid fantasy!
Hsu Chi is like a ray of sunshine strung
out on high voltage caffeine. Seemingly eternally optimistic and cheerful.
So much so that if it was any other actress you would probably want to strangle
her, but somehow Hsu Chi manages to be quite endearing. Eric Tsang has a
small, but well done role as Leo’s boss who has love problems of his own.
There really isn’t much here when you think about it, but it is a pleasant
enough way to spend some time with some attractive and interesting young
actors. All do excellent jobs, though Leo reminds me a bit of Leon Lai in
both his looks and his restrained performance. This is directed by Dante
Lam - only his second film. There were not a lot of romances after this.
His next film was the brilliant Jiang Hu: The Triad Zone and since then he
has become one of Hong Kong's top action directors.
