Let’s put away our
prudish selves for a moment. Lang Tong does execute the
gal-revenge-on-womaniser genre competently. The film is an evenly-paced story
about a cassanova-like character who does not blink an eye about fleeting from
one woman to another for the sake of his own lustful pleasures. Moving from
conquest to conquest, he repeats his lies. And yet, the girls keep getting more
and more attractive. The final straw came he lands himself two at the same
time. While dating Li Ling and co-habiting with her, he discovers very soon
that she has a sister Li Er, who is even more of a stunner than her. To avoid
spoiling the film here, what ensues is a trapping game in which we know too
well the protagonist is going to fall right into. And karma is not one bitch
but two.
The director paced the
film well and the plot unraveled itself without feeling hasty, giving enough
time for the little clues to sink in to the audience. The actors, who were
well-casted, delivered their roles satisfactorily, if not, perfunctorily. It
might be directorial, but they actors seemed to keep to a standard
cookie-cutter palette of expressions most of the time. While it served the plot
well, the characters appeared two-dimensional. The womaniser was as badass as
you wanted him to be. Somehow the dubbed voice for his characters accentuates
his cold-blooded nature. The cheated girls were as vulnerable and distressed as
you wanted them to be. The Li sisters were as sure-footed as heroines as you
wanted them to be.
The exception to the
bland characterization was Li Ling, the older sister of the two. Her character
allowed a wider dramatic range from playing the strong modern woman who can
wield the chopper like butcher to the sex siren who played along with the
womaniser to the vulnerable woman in moments of jealousy or painful
recollection. Kudos to actress Vivenne Tseng (picture below) for giving credibility and flesh
to the character.
The use of the ‘Bak
Kut Teh’ (pork rib soup) motif in the film lends a visual and cultural identity
to the film. The womaniser conditions his sex targets over Bak Kut Teh and the
conversations about the dish are somewhat suggestive. Interjected at strategic
points in the film are also mood-sequences of Li Ling chopping up the pork ribs
and preparing the dish at home. However, this borders a little on
over-posturing and excessive stylistics in an already narratively-thin film.
Cliché as they may be, it is in fact the standard segments in this cheater-gets-revenge
that seem more interesting and captivating. On hindsight, there is a lot going
on for any movie-goer who wants to be titillated and entertained in Lang Tong. For the parts that are good, they are Bak-kut-tehlicious, for the other parts not so good, the director knows where he needs to put a full stop, just like ending the movie where it should end.
Review by Jeremy Sing