Soul Mate (2016)

Perfection is rare

I started this because of liking both the leads, and they OWNED this. My eyes are still damp from the powerfully moving final few minutes.

It might be a simple story, but it was well told and PERFECTLY acted by the two leads. The movie was FULL of surprises for me, from hearing a voice that "like Faye Wong, but not" and finding out it was Leah Dou :), to the way the story and the story-within-a-story messed with perception and reality, to such emotional effect at the very end.

Award ceremonies get A LOT of criticism for their decisions, and most of it is 100% justified. But sometimes, they get it just right, and these two outstanding actors being made joint winners for this film was not merely the RIGHT decision, it was the only possible one. When trying to decide whether to score this a 9 or to go higher, I realised that was no substantive reason to dock any points, and in terms of its overall impact, if I could score it higher than 10, I would.

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If there's one thing you should know about this film is that the acting from its two leads: Zhou Dongyu and Ma Sichun is truly what makes this film worthwhile. I could do without some of the plot and how it all unfolds isn't the movie's strong suit. It's a little disjointed because of the back and forth but overall the story is fine. But with such strong performances between the Zhou Dongyu and Ma Sichun there's no question that this should be watched. These two are such versatile actors and apparently their friendship went beyond the filming cause they're bff off screen. The male lead is nothing to write about which is a shame since the film seems weaker because of his lack of... well just about anything. A shame really. Anyways the film is really pretty with some good music used to evoke emotion. The movie did stay with me for a while and worth your time to see great acting from these actresses.

They won Golden Horse for Best Actress together (a first for the award), which is not only thematically on point but so well deserved. You should watch their acceptance speeches. It's adorable.

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