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The Butterfly
Tornado Alley
This review may contain spoilers
Love means having to say hello and good-bye and hello and good-bye...
As young children Zhao Yongyuan (Nicholas Tse) and Anran (Gao Yuan Yuan) both suffered tragic events after an earthquake. They met as children and we in Dramaland know what this means: D-E-S-T-I-N-Y. Though they are torn apart again and again, pass just close enough to each other without seeing the other, suffer through lack of communication and noble sacrifices galore, we as the viewers know such obstacles are no match for Destiny. Or is the evil F-A-T-E in control?
Spoilery opinions will follow so reader beware...
Yongyuan lived with his grandmother as a child, barely able to afford clothes. Anran's father provided well for her. Through one act of kindness the two children become inseparable with Yongyuan always following Anran, a heavy-handed foreshadowing. Fate tears them apart for the first time. They are offered a second chance in their twenties and yet again fate thrusts them apart. Along with broken hearts, misunderstandings and noble sacrifice the two suffer alone on different continents. Amran goes to the United States as a graduate student to Columbia (daddy must have made really good money). Yongyuan goes to jail where he learns impeccable English and how to become an international trading mogul in one year. (None of which you see.) Beijing prisons must be awesome! Anran, all alone in the US, suffers a horrible tragedy that is glossed over quickly.
They collide in the United States during their 30's where the tables have been turned. Yongyuan is outrageously wealthy and Anran can't get a job anywhere with her measly graduate medical degree from Columbia. Apparently, Daddy must have spent all his money on her Columbia degree leaving her no inheritance. Oops! Spoiler! Well, the writing was on the wall when she left for the US and he gave her his watch that stopped when her mother died. That's okay because his death is dealt with in one sentence. She washes dishes as well as being a "tour guide" for a living. Her job as tour guide entails escorting wealthy clients in clothes they provide for her and going to dinner and a show. I'll stop with the spoilery plot developments except to say through minimal conversation and no honesty between the lovers they get back together and through one of the worst tropes in Dramaland and are torn apart...again. And then again...
I'll start with what I enjoyed. The first two times they were together when they were young were quite entertaining, even moving. Nicholas Tse and Gao Yuan Yuan were lovely to look at as their young adult and adult selves and the child actors who portrayed the young lovers/friends were cute as well. Veteran actor Lam Suet made a brief appearance as YY's uncle.
What didn't work for me: The tragedy upon tragedy with no time to process them, lack of any adult communication and honesty, the heavy-handed foreshadowing for just about all the tragedies, no subtlety involved including the overwrought OST, many of the tragedies and heartache happened offscreen so there was no way for me to connect or feel any empathy with their unseen pain, Yongyuan's ridiculously fast rise to super wealth, and the fact that he waits for her and follows her for over twenty years (not including all the childhood years). It was hard to feel any sympathy for characters who kept their feelings and secrets locked down tight. The love triangle with a childish and unlikeable character was unnecessary. The writer mistook characters suffering tragedies, many of which were off-screen, as character development and reasons for the viewer to feel sorry for them.
The actual camera shots of them wandering around, alone and forlorn in China and the US would have been lovely if they hadn't blown them out to the point the film looked like it was a faded forty-year-old movie. I get they might have been going for a gauzy romantic feel, but it didn't work for me, it was one more blurry barrier to connecting with these two. When the final tragedy struck, which again was foreshadowed in the opening scene, I felt nothing but relief that the film was almost over except that I had to sit through a propaganda announcement at the end.
I need somewhat coherent and consistent plot and character development and relationship development, But Always gave me none of that. This felt more like two people who wandered into each other's lives, messed everything up when Fate wasn't hurling everything she could at them from dead parents to national disaster after national disaster (think Remember Me with Rob Pattinson, if you liked this movie, you should try that one out). All the pain and angst felt manipulative by the writer and director instead of organic to the story. They could have cut the tragedies in half, developed the characters and their dialogue, given them more realistic reactions to each other and their tragic lives and the tsunami of suffering (they missed using a tsunami!) and these gorgeous cardboard characters could have come to life. I know this is an unpopular opinion on MDL because this movie hit a lot of people in the feels, but it missed the mark with me.
Spoilery opinions will follow so reader beware...
Yongyuan lived with his grandmother as a child, barely able to afford clothes. Anran's father provided well for her. Through one act of kindness the two children become inseparable with Yongyuan always following Anran, a heavy-handed foreshadowing. Fate tears them apart for the first time. They are offered a second chance in their twenties and yet again fate thrusts them apart. Along with broken hearts, misunderstandings and noble sacrifice the two suffer alone on different continents. Amran goes to the United States as a graduate student to Columbia (daddy must have made really good money). Yongyuan goes to jail where he learns impeccable English and how to become an international trading mogul in one year. (None of which you see.) Beijing prisons must be awesome! Anran, all alone in the US, suffers a horrible tragedy that is glossed over quickly.
They collide in the United States during their 30's where the tables have been turned. Yongyuan is outrageously wealthy and Anran can't get a job anywhere with her measly graduate medical degree from Columbia. Apparently, Daddy must have spent all his money on her Columbia degree leaving her no inheritance. Oops! Spoiler! Well, the writing was on the wall when she left for the US and he gave her his watch that stopped when her mother died. That's okay because his death is dealt with in one sentence. She washes dishes as well as being a "tour guide" for a living. Her job as tour guide entails escorting wealthy clients in clothes they provide for her and going to dinner and a show. I'll stop with the spoilery plot developments except to say through minimal conversation and no honesty between the lovers they get back together and through one of the worst tropes in Dramaland and are torn apart...again. And then again...
I'll start with what I enjoyed. The first two times they were together when they were young were quite entertaining, even moving. Nicholas Tse and Gao Yuan Yuan were lovely to look at as their young adult and adult selves and the child actors who portrayed the young lovers/friends were cute as well. Veteran actor Lam Suet made a brief appearance as YY's uncle.
What didn't work for me: The tragedy upon tragedy with no time to process them, lack of any adult communication and honesty, the heavy-handed foreshadowing for just about all the tragedies, no subtlety involved including the overwrought OST, many of the tragedies and heartache happened offscreen so there was no way for me to connect or feel any empathy with their unseen pain, Yongyuan's ridiculously fast rise to super wealth, and the fact that he waits for her and follows her for over twenty years (not including all the childhood years). It was hard to feel any sympathy for characters who kept their feelings and secrets locked down tight. The love triangle with a childish and unlikeable character was unnecessary. The writer mistook characters suffering tragedies, many of which were off-screen, as character development and reasons for the viewer to feel sorry for them.
The actual camera shots of them wandering around, alone and forlorn in China and the US would have been lovely if they hadn't blown them out to the point the film looked like it was a faded forty-year-old movie. I get they might have been going for a gauzy romantic feel, but it didn't work for me, it was one more blurry barrier to connecting with these two. When the final tragedy struck, which again was foreshadowed in the opening scene, I felt nothing but relief that the film was almost over except that I had to sit through a propaganda announcement at the end.
I need somewhat coherent and consistent plot and character development and relationship development, But Always gave me none of that. This felt more like two people who wandered into each other's lives, messed everything up when Fate wasn't hurling everything she could at them from dead parents to national disaster after national disaster (think Remember Me with Rob Pattinson, if you liked this movie, you should try that one out). All the pain and angst felt manipulative by the writer and director instead of organic to the story. They could have cut the tragedies in half, developed the characters and their dialogue, given them more realistic reactions to each other and their tragic lives and the tsunami of suffering (they missed using a tsunami!) and these gorgeous cardboard characters could have come to life. I know this is an unpopular opinion on MDL because this movie hit a lot of people in the feels, but it missed the mark with me.
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