Tropical Memories (2021)

"How did you end up here?"

Wen Shi Pei’s directorial debut, Are You Lonesome Tonight?, was an impressive first film. The sets and color scheme were heavily reminiscent of Wong Kar Wai. Shadows, rain, green, orange, and red lighting set the mood as much as the rundown sets. Eddie Peng and Sylvia Chang gave strong performances as the disparate main characters brought together by a husband’s death.

Wang Xue Ming is forced to take a detour late one night when a bull gets loose and refuses to move out of the road. One unassuming turn leads to cause and effect with Wang becoming entwined with the widow Liang and a group of unsavory businessmen.

The film began in the future with Wang in prison, lamenting his lack of memory of previous events. The story bounced back and forth repeatedly and you have to stay sharp to keep up with when the events were happening. Significant details unwound, revealing themselves in retelling the story from different angles. Even with those clues laid out, other secrets stayed buried.

Eddie Peng, in an unglamorous role with beaten face and unkempt hair, had the strongest performance I’ve seen him give until now. Enigmatic, and feeling guilty over the incident on a dark road, Wang kept his emotions tightly hidden. Sylvia Chang also shone as the widow who wasn’t particularly sad to lose her husband, yet also had no idea what to do with her life in an empty apartment. Wang Yan Hui as scruffy Detective Chen, had less to do, as he attempted to discover how Mr. Liang ended up dead. The stars were Peng and Chang in an unusual friendship.

AYLT dizzyingly overused the flashforward, flashback, and flashsideways for me, yet I still found the film’s style fascinating. The criminal mystery was largely left untouched, yet I wasn’t overly concerned so caught up was I in Wang and Liang’s strange give and take. At times slow, at times perplexing, and at times gorey, Are You Lonesome Tonight was an excellent first film for Wen Shi Pei.

“Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?”

4 February 2025

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This is my first review so please don’t judge me.

Lately i’ve been in a drama slump, everything i start is just not it. This movie, however, gave me hope.

First of all i want to talk about how visually pleasing it is. The over all use of warm tones throughout the whole movie is so pleasing to look at. It’s nothing new or what other movies haven’t done before but they executed it so well. Like the first ‘Twilight’ movie did or my all time favourite ‘Blade Runner 2049’.
The next thing is they don’t talk much. They let the viewer see and only when needed hear. What i’ve seen lately in crime/thriller/whatever dramas they think you’re so dumb that you can’t figure out a little tiny thing for yourself so they show you from the beginning everything. Here they show you piece by piece what really happened shortly before and after the accident. And you have until the end of the movie still time to speculate, even though it is pretty obvious but we talk about that in a minute.
I have to praise the acting. Like it was sooo damn good. No unnecessary screaming, no overacting and no boring facial expressions.
The plot was good but nothing you haven’t seen before. Sometimes you can predict what happens next but for me that wasn’t a problem because i really was captured by the psychological side of the plot. I can’t put it into words but i think through the lack of words spoken and the action shown by the main character i felt his guilt and how he thought he could deal with it.
So all in all 9.5 out of 10.

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