Ai Qing Shen Hua (2021)

An Extraordinary Character Study by a World Class Director

I saw Shao Yi Hui's second film (HER STORY) first, and went backwards to see her only other film, B FOR BUSY.

Let me warn anyone interested in seeing this it's merely a character study of love, divorce, and the character of cinema itself. There is no plot.

We simply watch an extremely well crafted study of all sorts of characters, each as fascinating as the next. I could spent 48 episodes watching these people, but unfortunately this is a film and so get about 10 episodes compressed into two hours.

Most directors cannot keep your attention in a story with no plot. Shao Yi Hui keeps everything interesting, the pace moves, but it's also relaxing somehow. No one will break a bottle and use it as a weapon on anyone. No drug use, fist fights, none of the vast array of cheap 'thrills' are here to dress up the mundane. Instead --

-- the mundane is presented to us as a lovely bouquet of flowers. No flower is perfect, and no two flowers are the same, but this director's ability to arrange 'flowers' is world class. Very few directors over the years have shown this skill. Shao Yi Hui loves people and their ability to be human on camera reassures us of our human experience.

When you're dealing with this gifted a writer/director, in the class of say Woody Allen -- inevitably the film becomes about film itself. There's a story told late in the film that is as fantastic as it is suspiciously fictitious. We believe it's both a lie and a truth, which is what all of cinema ultimately is: a fiction that rings truer than life itself.

As Shao Yi Hui's first film, seemingly a student film -- I can accept this otherwise pointless journey. This movie isn't about the story. It's about Shao Yi Hui's skill sets and her magic ability to generate great characters.

Don't believe me? Her next film HER STORY is all this but better. An auteur to both watch and be in awe of.

BY THE WAY -- If you don't do Mandarin, you won't understand the ending of this film -- because it's being 'texted' during the credits. If you are streaming this, pause the texting and you use Google Translate's 'Image' mode to translate.

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