Asian Film Review: Hot Summer Days (全城熱戀)

First time directors Wing Shyaand Tony Chan conceived this movie while working together on the set of Alexi Tan's 2008 film 'Blood Brothers'. The story goes that they were freezing their a$$es off filming in China during the dead of winter so they vowed their next movie together would be the exact opposite.... the concept for 'Hot Summer Days' (全城熱戀) was born!  Tony Chan wrote the script and With some help from friends and colleagues, they quickly put together funding and an all star cast that includes Jacky Cheung, Daniel Wu and Nicholas Tse.  The film is basically a series of lightly connected vignettes about love in many different forms.  In effect its five romantic story lines rolled into one. Some are more funny, some are more romantic, some are more dark,  but they all share the same backdrop of a hot summer.  Both filmmakers have expressed that they tried to use classical romantic film style that we rarely see nowadays.  They were willing to risk the film being deemed cheesy or contrived in order to capture the relatively idealistic and wholesome retro storytelling style.  (modern day cynics be damned!)  

This thematic choice, coupled with the cast and timing of the film's release will undoubtedly translate into big success in HK and more importantly the Mainland China theater market. The film is coming out this week in China, in time for both Chinese New Year and Valentines day. Although there is a lot of competition at the box office this year from films like 'True Legend' and the '72 Tenants' remake,  'Hot Summer Days' is different enough that it should still do well.

To get into the mechanics of the film - it has several different style of love stories juxtaposed against each other and the film switches back and forth between them.  As you can see above, there are a few tangential connections between the stories, but basically they are independent.  I'm always trepidatious about films switch back and forth between independent stories or plot lines like this, as the pacing and storytelling sometimes suffer as storylines are left hanging and you forget what last happened in a particular plot line when they switch back and forth.  'Hot Summer Days' does a good job trying to keep all the balls in the air during this juggling act, but as the story goes, of course there are some stories you find more engaging than others, so I found myself saying "oh crap, it switched! skip this one, go back to the last one!!!"  

Of the various storylines and couplings, I have to say my favorite is Jacky Cheung's.  He plays a single father who meets a women (played by Rene Liu) across the border in Shenzhen through an unlikely but believable sequence of events.  I like one most because of Jacky's performance as well as the fact that it tells the whole story from beginning to end, whereas the others sort of jump into situations and you spend a bit of time trying to decipher the personal history between the characters before you can focus on the story.

Anyway,  if you're in the right mood for an old school romantic movie melded with a good Chinese New Year.  Even a cynical,  unemotional person like me can give it a strong 7/10. Check it out!

ps - Every time I saw Daniel in a scene I kept thinking one word:

Pornstache! pps -

this poster has little or nothing to do with the actual movie, but its a good way to trot out the star power.  I think Chinese filmmakers are learning from the Koreans... :-P