Movie Review: Mr. & Mrs. Single/隱婚男女

In  Mr. & Mrs. Single/隱婚男女, Eason Chan plays an underachieving but loving husband who gets a job as assistant to a powerful businesswoman. But in order to get (and keep) the job, he has to pretend to be unmarried.

Marital tensions and devotional ambiguities ensue.

This is hardly new territory for director Patrick Kong.

I actually enjoyed Patrick Kong’s last film, Marriage with a Liar, if for all the wrong reasons. His films in general, and that film in particular, are somewhat crass, showing Hong Kong’s young people to be cynical, manipulative, and trashy.

At the very least, its a refreshing antidote to the antiseptic foppery that characterizes so many local romantic comedies (and the entire public presentation of pop stars).

I’m not saying its good for young people to be promiscuous, mean little freaks.

What I’m saying is that in reality, some of them are, and it’s at least refreshing when Patrick Kong gives us this kind of honest portrayal, especially in the midst of a lot of other movies (and media) that try to sugar-coat the movies and the people both portrayed and  portraying.

So when I heard that Patrick Kong was making a film for the China Market, a part of me wanted to see what would happen. Because in China, you can’t have any of that stuff.

No sex in China film. Family-friendly only.

No ghosts, gambling, bad cops, good crooks, or, starting this week, time travel either.

Which is fine because no movies about any of that stuff have ever been any good. Especially not in Hong Kong.

Odd then, that my favorite metaphor for pandering to this sanitized market is based on fellatio.

To wit: With Mr. & Mrs. Single/隱婚男女, Patrick Kong willfully gets on his knees and engulfs the China Market Cck energetically. He tickles the Big Red Bozac and fights back the gag reflex, deep-throating the Mainland in hopes of a copious money shot right down his eager, cck-gobbling throat.

That allegory is as graphic (and gross) as Mr. & Mrs. Single/隱婚男女 is not.

You don’t need all that stuff to have a good film, don’t get me wrong.

And until I watched this film, I’d have said that all you need for a good film is Rene Liu. Don’t ask me why, but I really enjoy looking at her. I watch her movies because she’s in them.

I wish…

In all honesty, I only watched thismovie because Rene Liu was in it.

I really couldn’t find any other reason. Sure, I like Patrick Kong movies for their more… socially irredeemable qualities. But the problem with Patrick Kong films is that the lurid stuff is the only thing that makes up for otherwise tepid and pedestrian film-making. So if you take away all the nastiness, you get…

Sh*t.

You get an uninteresting story about uninteresting people doing uninteresting things.

You get milk, too.

No, really.

Andy Lau is the Uber-Whore of product placement. That tea, the watch, the phones, it doesn’t matter. Andy Lau shamelessly puts out for his sponsors like a good bitch.

But that’s nothing.

Andy Lau could start shilling a laxative, and in every movie he could take a sh*t on-camera in every scene he doesand it would still be less intrusive and repugnant than the frigging milk in  Mr. & Mrs. Single/隱婚男女.

The Mongolian Milk Cooperative (I’m only partially joking) runs a train on this film.

The lead character is the f@#$ing milk, so often does it pop up in frame.

“Does this smell like milk?”

On a business trip, in a nice hotel, the refrigerators  in the rooms aren’t stocked with booze or even tea, but MILK.

It’s all anyone drinks, except for the beer the film is also whoring.

It’s wildly obtrusive, shameless, and cheap.

Trust me, I know about those traits.

The other major product placement is only two of those three things.

Every stitch of clothing Eason wears is made by Lacoste, and I am sure it’s only a concidence that the vast majority of the clothes this character wears just happento feature immense logos.

There are television commercials for Lacoste clothing that have less Lacoste clothing than this film.

It was hard to hear the dialog sometimes over the constant thrum of this film whoring itself.

This film reminds me of  Fit Lover because it turns the emotional climax of the film into a product placement. Yes, it sells itself out thatthoroughly.

Well, fuck you too.

But hey, at least its not gambling, time-traveling ghosts being chased by a corrupt cop who’s a vampire.

That would be wrong and harmful to children.

Making light of homosexuals apparently is not harmful in China.

During the film, when Rene asks Eason if he is “like Danny,” another character who appears gay, they both break into great guffaws of mirth.

In China, f@ggots are funny.

“I heard you and the fish laughing…”

Oddly, what is not funny (either in terms of humor or strangeness) are young wives so paranoid, gullible, and materialistic that I found myself wanting to kick the character in the head. I didn’t get the impression that any of these traits were supposed to be flaws or make her unlikeable, and the film seemed to be oddly accepting of her frankly unbearable demeanor.

Every time she is upset, Eason simply takes her shopping, and it always works. Lucky him.

“I have the best wife money can buy.”

Getting rich is glorious. Shopping (for Lacoste and milk) is gloriouser.

The tagline on the poster says something to the effect of “Will Rene change Eason’s status?”, an obvious allusion to Facebook.

Which is implicitly retarded, because there is no Facebook in China.

There is no Facebook because that’s how Communism rolls.

It’s also retarded because they use the actor’s names and not the characternames, but that’s just one of the peripheral joys of a shamelessly commercial film industry culture.

Another peripheral joy is seeing artists in unintentional coprophilia porn poses.

This film wasn’t made for me. I’m not in Patrick Kong’s usual Hong Kong audience demographic, and I sure as f@#$ am not in his PRC demographic either. This film conforms, out of commercial (and political) necessity to a set of rules that I have no choice but to accept. Films like this are the future.

Which is a shame, because  Mr. & Mrs. Single/隱婚男女 sucks. It’s a 90-minute excuse to shill clothes and milk and it shows almost everything wrong with China-friendly filmmaking.

The future of film is 90 minute commericals full of shit acting, shit writing, shit directing and shit.

And milk.

Fuck you too, China Market.

By trying to make a film innocuous, it actually makes it creepier. Since all the prurient (read: real) behavīor is only hinted at, you get a film rife with human dysfunction and virtually no redemption.

Imagine if John Waters directed an After School Special that was vetted by the 700 Club. It would be creepy and weird by virtue of how  not creepy and weird it is. Especially when you realize that the creepy things that are left in are tacitly acceptable.

*By leaving out everything that’s not okay, you’re left with what isokay in China. And, like in  Two Stupid Eggs,  not all of it is innocuous and family friendly.*

For this film, that means homophobia.

For Two Stupid Eggs, it means rape. And I am not kidding or exaggerating.

Love China; faggot bashing, rape, and all.

This film reflects poorly on China in a lot of ways.

So its odd that it supposedly conforms to guidelines intended to promote a harmonious society.

This week, China’s media governing body essentially banned time travel as a narrative device. During discussions about it, my friends and I realized that it is not unrealistic to wonder if the next restrictions will be on time and travel; all films will take place in China, and all during the last 50 years. Because there is no better time or place than the Glorious People’s Paradise.

For a nation that supposedly wants to join the global community, China sure isolates itself a lot.

And makes shitty movies doing it!

It was strange this week also that a www.chinafilm.com editorial (check my Facebook notes) took the HK Film Awards to task for being ‘regional’ and ‘petty’ because they didn’t award any China films.

First of all, you insufferable fucking dullards (because no one put a name to it; must have been written by The People!), the HKFA always were and were always meant to be regional awards. Second of all, how many HK films win your petty regional awards in China?

The big problem, I bet, is that the HKFA gave the Best Asian Film award to Confessions, a Japanese film that was far and away the best film in the region last year.

Of course, it beat Aftershock, a Chinese film.

They awarded a Japanese film!

And did not award the Chinese film!

About an earthquake!

The HKFA is not patriotic!

They are petty and regional!

They have no heart!

Neither does a film about a real-life earthquake with shameless product placement (including DIALOGUE) for cars, wine and insurance, you filthy scum-sucking dogs. I hope you die.

You know where government control of ‘creative’ media leads? Here:

Please understand that I am not joking. That’s what China-friendly films are like.

China has everything to gain from the death of Hong Kong cinema. We have everything to lose.

I’m already starting to lose it. But you can probably see that pretty clearly.