“DON’T GO BREAKING MY HEART” (單身男女) Movie Review. True LOVE is always FIZZY, FROGGY and BITTER-SWEET. Right?

“DON’T GO BREAKING MY HEART”(單身男女)PRESS PREVIEW

“DON’T GO BREAKING MY HEART” tries, unashamedly to extol all virtues of what a true love should be. It does work, to a point.

It also brandishes an emotive title that’s typically “old school”.

This is the film’s positioning.

We are led to believe that love is often precariously sweet, yet saccharine baffling.

The path of true love does not run smooth.

Enter-as-you-dare and as everyone would surely do at some point in life, love is  addictive, liken to fornicative sex where each participant shares his pleasurable form of connecting.

See, you now have your cake and eat it.

This long-anticipated Mandarin feature bills Hong Kong heart throbs DANIEL WU, LOUIS KOO and introduces unknown doe-eyed mainland actress GAO YUAN YUAN to the rest of Asia.

JOHNNIE TO and WAI KA-FAI grills this loving piece on the BBQ pit with such tender care that’s bound to leave you with a thin coat of tangy aftertaste, long when the credits are rolling and the lights are up.

So is it any good?

Come on, it’s time to move in with the flow.

Let’s start with love is “fizzy”. Daniel Wu is Fang, a disillusioned architect who hits the fizzy bottle once too often to free himself from reality.  He sports a disheveled demeanor, is bearded and shaggy.

He saves Zixin (Gao Yuan Yuan) from being run down by an oncoming vehicle and they become fast friends.  With the utmost gratitude, Zixin presents Fang with an ugly pet frog, courtesy of her ex boy friend who had dumped her.

So love is “froggy” here.  The puffy pet frog becomes their “symbol” of a growing bond.

Zixin has her dreamy moods, on days when she cannot focus on her work. She “interacts” with her “opposite” neighbor Cheng (Louis Koo) from across the opposite building on the same level , using colourful Post-it notes affixed on their respective windows.

The gentle art of window communication, a la ‘seduction’ goes on … and on.

Cheng is a financial whiz kid,  a cad, a dandy, a playboy who’s attracted to the ever-silly Zixin, simply because she’s “different” from the regular brood of gals he brings easily to his bed.

He’s rich and he stashes a colorful assortment of condoms in his car “just-in-case”.

One fine day the entire global market crashes and things take a different toll.

Cheng moves out of the opposite building and Fang quietly disappears from the scene, and with everybody gone, life for Zixin hits a rut.

Fast zoom to three years later when Cheng returns abruptly to become Zixin’s boss and Fang also does a popping up exercise. This is at the convenience of the scrīptwriter.

Our lovey-go-round commences once more, this time on a more heated plateau.

The plot tarries back and forth expanding on this exasperating love triangle with both Cheng and Fang each trying to convince Zixin of their undying devotion.

Which guy bags the gal in the end?

Zixin starts as a loser in love and ends up ensnaring two rich and successful suitors.  Her star shines.

Cheng is a bad boy who’s self-assured, conceited and has the perpetual roving eye. He’s a wolf and will alway be one.

Fang is down-to-earth, wears his heart on his sleeve, has a steely presence, and would be the type every gal would love to bring back to mama.

Let’s say it’s simple to put someone on a weighing scale and measure him.

But it is impossible to measure this human quality we call the heart.

Metaphorically speaking, it’s not just the size of the man in any fight.  It is the size of the fight in the man.

The one lesson this film tells us is that being in love doesn’t mean that everything in that person has to be perfect. It means you have to look beyond his imperfections.

Having drawled on this, it’s easy to deduce who’s the eventual guy who will win the fair lady’s heart.

To sum up this building-to-building office romance, it will be apt to use this line:

“The most beautiful view is the one I share with you.”

I’ll honestly vouch for this one.