OMG , this was a terrible movie

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this film was heart wrenching. it's not a shallow 'love story'. I guess watch it again when you're older, have more life experience and after you read some background info on the history of WW2 in China?

Perhaps "Transformers" is more up your alley?

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Paddle faster, I hear banjos!

I just had the most profound experience ever of a movie's key message jumping out at me, long, long after seeing it (6 years!).

Everyone is going on about who used/abused whom. The more powerful message is about the nature of intimacy. It's very, very simple: Yee tells Wong Chia Chi *everything*. Do you really think Mrs. Yee has the slightest idea what Yee does? She does NOT, plain and simple.

And this is the overriding theme of all relationships: the more-of-less letting of another person into your life, warts and all. It reminds me of a woman I was talking with who came from the Ukraine to marry an American. She told me that *after* she married him, he informed her that he'd been married 4 times previously. I said (trying to deflect this to a joke), "Well, as long as they're not buried in the backyard...". How truly intimate could they be?

It adds a touch of subversion to the story. I still think it may be the best anti-war movie ever made, but it also seems to toy with the idea of subjugation--and the horror that accompanies it--as simply a part of life. Yee seems to have a "healthy" relationship with Wong, from the standpoint of closeness and "letting go" as a fundamental human need: Yet it sits alongside the cowardice of going with the flow, where that "flow" is the onrush of violent Japanese control. It's a weird way of pushing the idea of the transcendence of erotic love; that Yee can even transcend the horror of his collaborationism, while Kuang (the young thespian leader) can't. The wartime conditions have, sexually, pinned Kuang to the wall, and there he rests, wriggling about helplessly, having internalized the assumption that transcendence will be have to wait 'til the day everyone in his country is free.

I mean, what's more tragic than *that*? I cry, like clockwork, at the end of this movie, every time I watch it, which is once or twice a year.

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Fhe OP avers,
"Somehow YOU never get really involved with the characters enough to make the love story grow on YOU."

Once again we have someone to tell us (incorrectly, I might add) what we are or are not capable of doing. As one who in fact WAS quite involved with the characters I can only reply, "Learn to use the first person singular and to own your own feelings".



Only two things are actually knowable:
It is now and you are here. All else is merely a belief.

One thing that isn't often discussed about the film (and the book it's based on) is the influence from the author, Zhang Ai-ling (Eileen Chang's), own experiences. Much like Chia-chi, Eileen Chang:

- Had a parent who essentially abandoned her and went to the UK (in real life, her mother, who did eventually return)
- Was basically the same age as Chia-chi
- Was from Shanghai
- Was at university in Hong Kong around the same time depicted in the book/movie
- Was involved with an influential, older, already married, Chinese traitor/collaborator (in real life, Chang married as a plural wife Hu Lancheng, a publisher and editor for the Japanese Propaganda Ministry)
- Was loyal to, but betrayed by, her collaborator love-interest (Chang's husband took up with several other women, then at the end of the war abandoned her and went into hiding, eventually fleeing to Japan)

If Chia-chi is indeed a sympathetic character, then some of that may stem from her creator's own understanding of her motivations. Also, as several of the other posters here have noted, the English subtitles for the film are very rough and do not convey many of the important subtleties that Chinese-speaking audiences might pick up on. That said, when I first watched the film with an audience of Chinese people, almost every one of them came away calling Chia-chi "foolish", "so stupid", or someone with "no understanding". Most also pointed out that her actions were "selfish" in costing the lives of her friends, and that she "wasn't a true patriot", even in her initial motivations. Those who are familiar with Eileen Chang's life also suggested that the book may have been something of a self-repudiation of her thinking at that time.

well said ,this was supposed to be and asian version of last tango ,the actors aren't nearly as good they move and act like robots .

Humankind cannot bear very much reality