Anna Magdalena 安娜玛德莲娜

A piano tuner (Takeshi Kaneshiro) meets a carefree, fun-loving guy (Aaron Kwok), who before long moves into his apartment. The taciturn romantic gets along fairly peacefully with his flighty, womanizing roommate, but soon a beauty, Mok Man-Yu (Kelly Chen), moves into the flat above them, and our vulnerable hero falls for her at once. Life, however, is different from fantasies, and Mok Man-Yu is quickly won over by Aaron Kwok, who prefers to take the bull by the horns in his relationships with women. They move in together, while Takeshi writes a book about eternal love, loneliness, and the happiness of having the one you love by your side.

Impressions: Oh, what a marvel... Having seen a slightly later film by director Yee Chung-Man (and made by exactly the same people and the lion's share of the cast as Anna Magdalena), I already knew I was in for something special, but reality surpassed my wildest expectations. An incredibly romantic, touching and sensual film, a true delight for all melancholics and dreamers who prefer to sigh beneath the moon and watch sad movies instead of chasing after their dream girl and vying for her attention. This may seem a little strange to you, but believe me, on screen such behavior instantly acquires meaning, and a meaning far deeper than you could have imagined.

Picture an ordinary love triangle. Two guys and a girl. One guy loves the girl, the second thinks he loves her, and she in turn has fallen for the youth, drive and inexhaustible energy of the second, preferring not to notice the sadness in the first one's eyes. That is her right, and that is how the world works and there is nothing you can do about it — natural selection, the law of cussedness — call it whatever you like, the meaning won't change. And what is left for the one who has been thrown out of this triangle, which without him has formed a straight line with no beginning and no end? Of course, to tell someone about his pain, and then to grieve and sigh for a long time. A masochist, a spineless wimp — again, you can call him whatever you like, but to my mind he is a romantic. A true, unclouded romantic who prefers to wait for his one true love, with whom everything will be like a fairy tale — from beginning to end. It is no accident that the line is heard more than once in the film: "Someone may wait a lifetime for his Mok Man-Yu, and still never find her."

The idea may not be especially profound, but it is delivered with surprising poignancy, mainly thanks to Ivy Ho's wonderful screenplay and the amusing performances of the three central actors. First-time director Yee Chung-Man may not yet have acquired much directorial experience (before this he had worked exclusively as an art director on such films as Comrades: Almost a Love Story, Such Is Life, Beloved and City Hunter), and some scenes he "doesn't quite pull off," leaving them hanging in the air, but he has chosen the right tone. In style the film resembles a somewhat more colorful Wong Kar-Wai, and from him too is borrowed Takashi Kaneshiro, who after Chungking Express and Fallen Angels risks being forever turned into "the last true romantic."

Yee Chung-Man, however, does not let the viewer drown in gentle melancholy — at first it will seem to you that this is a comedy. The incredibly energetic Aaron Kwok delivers here one of his best roles, moving somewhat away from his usual image of the honest womanizer. He curses at Kelly Chen, plays the horse races, strolls around the apartment in his underpants and races about on rollerblades, all the while breaking the hearts of young and beautiful girls, leaving them to grieve alone afterward while he goes off in search of new adventures. And so the first half of the film passes — a fairly standard love triangle which, though presented very vividly and brightly, is hardly distinguished by any originality. The second half, though, is a different matter. The happy ending for the Aaron Kwok-Kelly Chen couple arrives already at the fiftieth minute of the film, and after that we are shown a book written after these events by Takashi Kaneshiro's character, in which a pair of fortune hunters (Kaneshiro himself and Chen) find gold, but promise the ghost guarding it to deliver its music box to a certain Mok Man-Yu, to whom the ghost never managed to confess his love while alive.

And this is where things get really interesting. Not only does the style change abruptly — melodrama gives way to absurd comedy — but so does the cast. Takeshi Kaneshiro is a dashing Robin Hood of our times, while Kelly Chen turns from a shrewish neighbor into the ideal of his fantasies — a brave, sharp-tongued, and independent beauty capable of "stopping a galloping horse." It's not hard to guess that, after going through thick and thin, the couple will fall in love, and then we're brought back to the real world, where the book, though it did get published, was unable to help its author — he will be understood only by the lonely, only by people "tuned to his wavelength," of whom there are fewer and fewer every year. The complete absence of a happy ending evokes even more associations with Kar-Wai's films, but Hai Chung-Man's movie, despite its problems in the dramatic department, still carries a considerable charge of healthy youthful optimism, so necessary in our lives. Add to that an excellent soundtrack (not Kar-Wai again, but very close), and I hope that after everything I've written here, you'll already be able to determine precisely whether you need this film or not. Personally, I'm eagerly looking forward to my next viewing — excellent cinema.