Two lonely souls come across each other in Beijing and develop their romantic yet tragic love story in A Beautiful Life. Filmed by Andrew Lau, the film is different from common local romance film as it is more affectionate and realistic. Li Peiru (Shu Qi) is a beautiful, aggressive Beijing-based real estate agent from Hong Kong and is having a torturous affair with her boss who is a married man. At a night of heavy drinking in a karaoke lounge, she meets Fang Zhendong (Liu Ye). He is an honest, divorced policeman who remains single to take care of his developmentally challenged brother. When they first meet, no one can see this coming. He is infatuated with her after running into each other several times and those nights that they spend together when Li is drunk. Whenever she is lonely, he is always around. He is always supportive to her no matter by money or emotional pillar. But after Li loses her married boyfriend, her job, her apartment and the money Fang lends her, she becomes desperate and returns to her home in Hong Kong. Then few years later, Li finally realizes that Fang is the one for her and so she goes back to him despite by the time when she finds him, he is diagnosed with vascular dementia. They live together with Fang’s brother on the outskirts of Beijing and face unexpected and innumerable challenges the rest of the story.
Coming from same country but two different cities, Fang and Li have certain culture difference. Li is a typical materialistic girl in hong Kong but Fang is just a ordinary policeman who has a stable life in Beijing. Li is a kind of character that we called “Hong Kong girl”. There is a scene that she airs her grievances to Fang about all those pressure from life and family and how she has to spend most of her money on property, and even complaining on why someone who is deaf could get married but not her. The director designed some negative lines about girls from Hong Kong like friend of Fang’s doubt Li when she comes back to look for Fang and he said, “Will girls like you from HK really treat relationship seriously?” However after negatively imaged, there are also some shifts in the personality of the character. The flirtatious money worship girl unbelievably turns to a domesticated and selfless housewife and she didn’t abandon Fang after knowing him suffers from degenerative disease. And on the other hand, though Fang has misfortune, the personality of this leading character is too good to be true that the director has successfully shape an ideal man model and touches the hearts of female audience. He has a strong sense of responsibility and he takes care of both his brother and Li very well throughout the film until he loses the ability to do so at the end of the film due to his illness. He loses his pride and dignity of being a man who used to take care the whole family and becomes moody, but the love to Li from the deepest part of his heart can still easily move and inspire the audience.
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A very detailed summary of the selected film, with discussion of the major protagonists and some particular scenes in illustrating the arguments. The examination of love relations and gender images depicted in the film is nicely presented with valid examples.
ReplyDeleteAgain you can make the introduction more concise and emphasize on the part of analysis. For example, you may elaborate a bit on the excellent personal qualities embodied by the male protagonist. What kind of pleasure can Hong Kong audience (mainly female audiences I guess) derive from the portrayal of such a perfect man who values sincerity and loyalty? What are the social significance of all these values?