C'est La Vie Mon Cheri 新不了情

Saxophonist Kit (Lau Ching-Wan) is unhappy with his life — he's dating the popular singer Tracy (Carina Lau), but the world that revolves around money doesn't sit right with him, which forces him to break up with Tracy and move to the slums. Right below him lives an odd family of street performers who put on Chinese opera shows for passersby, and after getting to know their youngest daughter, Min (Anita Yuen), Kit finally comes alive, beginning to see the world with newly opened eyes. It's just a shame that their happiness is too short-lived: Min has had bone cancer since childhood, and it can make itself known at any moment.

Impressions: A triumph at the annual Hong Kong Film Awards, this film took home no fewer than six prizes at the time, including virtually all the major categories. It's quite obvious, then, that I was expecting something outstanding, and it was rather strange to find a thoroughly ordinary melodrama that barely stands out from the crowd. Films about the terminally ill and their final romances have always been popular, and they bloomed with particular vigor in Hong Kong, nurtured on the fertile soil of the Cantonese melodramas so widespread in the 1950s.

It's sad to admit that little has changed since then — C'est La Vie Mon Cheri has absolutely nothing new to offer its audience beyond the same cheerful girl hiding a fatal tragedy behind her outward happiness, and the devoted loser she fills with self-confidence and optimism. And while the film is quite engaging during its first hour, by the finale it loses its face entirely, treading the well-worn path of the story about a dying girl with her beloved keeping vigil at her bedside day and night.

The film is as unoriginal as it is, surprisingly, sincere. The most banal situations and dialogue are somehow brought to life by the actors. Aside from a simply magnificent supporting cast (Paul Chun, Carrie Ng and Petrina Fung are truly superb), the lead couple also looks great, both together and apart. The scatterbrained Anita Yuen and the sullen Lau Ching-Wan have such wonderful chemistry together that this on-screen pair was subsequently reunited again and again ("I've Got You Babe", "Golden Girls", "Tears and Triumph", "Tricky Business"), and in this film it's clear why. Their relationship is so touching, sunny and pure that it more than justifies all the unoriginality of the plot and the excessive saccharine quality of the whole production (it's amusing that it was precisely for its screenplay and direction that the film did win HKFA awards). Just a likeable melodrama that "hit the right mood," as is evident, for far too many people.