With the final notes to the superb Super Citizen Ko (1995-also reviewed) still on my mind, I took a look to see what else was soon to screen at the HOME cinema in Manchester in May 2022,and was delighted to spot another title from Taiwan being shown, which was to have a (what turned out to be wonderful) discussion after the screening with the audience members, which led to me, finding my valentine.
View on the film:
Staying on the right side of a yearning young love teen, Kuan-Ting Liu gives an excellent performance as Tai, whose crush from a distance for Hsiao-chi, is put into focus by Liu when time stands still, with Liu getting one hand to turn on a playful, Rom-Com awkwardness, and the other to move on Tai finding his voice,maturing in seeing the real inner beauty of Hsiao-chi.
In a state of being constantly out of time, Patty Pei-Yu Lee (who also performs the song Lost and Found in the movie) gives a sparkling performance as Hsiao-chi, whose burning the candle at both ends in making sure she is always ahead of the work schedule, is lit on one side by Lee with a frustration at the grinding work cycle, and on the other with deeply expressive Rom-Com tears, as Hsiao-chi discovers at her desk,that she and her Valentine are out of time.
Spending six months working on editing the movie with editor Hsiu-hsiung Lai, director Yu-Hsun Chen & cinematographer Yi-Hsien Chou prove this to be time well used, via refine panning shots over chalk colours subtly emphasizing the lack of brightness in Hsiao-chi's life, sharply contrasted in the Sci-Fi Rom-Com final, where Chen and Chou makes time stand still with astonishing, ultra-stylized crane, tracking-shots,arc, dolly and whip-pans spinning on sequences shot on location, of Tai moving everyone aside who he is ahead of time with, until Chen makes time stand still for Tai, with a hard smash cut.
Leaving the ending on an ambiguous note, with the lingering possibility that Rom-Com love has been fulfilled, or that it must now permanently remain as a ghost, the screenplay by Chen highlights the struggles Hsiao-chi is under, with the dialogue referencing her living hand to mouth, in a cost of living crisis state.
Initially displaying some obsessiveness over Hsiao-chi, Chen keeps the Rom-Com love Tai has for Hsiao-chi playing on a sincere note, thanks to the Sci-Fi stillness of time, making Tai push away sexist behavior displayed by others towards Hsiao-chi, and also the acceptance, that the romantic photos he dreams to have of Hsiao-chi, do not match the reality of their relationship, as Tai and Hsiao-chi discover their missing Valentine.
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