In a break from his historical epics, Zhang Yimou relaxes w/ a modern romantic fable that might work twice as well w/ half the content. With CINDERELLA, CITY LIGHTS and SNOW WHITE & THE 7 DWARFS as templates, we follow the mad-cap pursuit by a middle-aged marrying man for an obese harridan who sticks him w/ her blind waif of a step-daughter. The sentimental comedy works better than you’d expect due to sharp perfs and the exceptionally lovely ingenue (Dong Jie), but an unearned tragic/ironic ending curdles our goodwill. Still, there’s a workable feel-good farce in here, if only Zhang didn’t force things. Watch for some sharp comic staging in close quarters as Zhang lets his inner Blake Edwards out.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment