Love in a Puff (traditional Chinese: 志明與春嬌)
The movie Love in a Puff was a romantic comedy directed by Pang Ho-Cheung in 2010 and starring Shawn Yue and Miriam Yeung. The story is about how 2 smokers met and got into a romantic relationship due to the banning of smoking in all indoor smoking area. The film is classified as a category 3 film in Hong Kong because of dialogues with excessive foul language.
The story started by sharing ghost stories and dirty jokes within smokers who were having a cigarette break gathering, smokers did not know each other unless their usually meet at the smoking area with garbage can that with ash tray provided, known as”打邊爐”(hot pot gathering) in Cantonese.
This is nothing new in our daily life since the ban of smoking policy has been introduced, the director chosen this common experience of Hong Kong people and especially to smokers, strongly boosted the interests of Hong Kong’s audience watching the film.
Beside from the “hot pot” gathering, others elements like Canton foul language, jokes, chatting through SMS, using Facebook, etc, were also parts of our daily activities. These elements were full of local popular culture that shaped our mindsets and acts. The usage of these components making audiences to be more easily getting into the story, understanding characters’ feelings and actions.
Although the film was categorized as a romantic comedy, love story or romantic plot was not really that much. The romantic parts were also nothing special to local audience unlike others romantic love story which were unpredictable. Yet, it fits the production of the film and playing the whole film smoothly as the film seems to be only a sharing of common sense of local people.
The banning of smoking in all indoor smoking area has received lots of opposing noises although the government claimed that they had conducted the best survey from the public and were just to fulfill people’s wants. Personally, being a smoker, also feeling uncomfortable to the policy and the following cigarette taxes. Like what have been mentioned in the film, the advantage to smokers and office workers is that the policy forces people to have cigarette break in the form of”打邊爐”, increasing the probability of socializing with other smokers and making new friends. Besides, another shot like Cherie (starring by Miriam Yeung) and Jimmy (starring by Shawn Yue) were driving around to search for cheap cigarettes before the addition on cigarette tax. This kind of shot is nothing new in every new addition of cigarette tax policy comes and just showing how helpless are smokers in Hong Kong, they have no any bargaining power to fight against government policy. For me, I will not consider the film to be romantic movie but a beautiful story that sharing collective memory and local culture.
Movie trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmHopCYywDg
By Chan Man Hong, Haze (10463287)
Oh my God! After a year, I am still marking on a film review of “Love in a Puff” (please refer to the numbers of review on the same film posted last year)! Anyway, your review is quite organized with a major focus, studying the text from the perspective of smokers, which is relatively new as compared to the previous reviews.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to know that you didn't find much "romance" elements in the film. To me, the smoking scenes always bring me to a status of ambivalence and “being lost”, which also acts as a metaphor for love relationship. Perhaps the different perceptions/decoding rooted in our social and cultural experiences (e.g., gender, age, personal history).
P.S. As a non-smoker, I have never thought of the “advantages” of executing the non-smoking policy (i.e., providing opportunities to socialize with other smokers and making new friends). This really sounds like an outrageous idea!