Lie to Me
Writer Ho Miu-ki steps into the director’s chair with her scam-turned-romance romance. practise caution with that trailer.
Love LIes
Director: Ho Miu-ki • Writers: Chan Hing-kai, Ho Miu-ki
Starring: Sandra Ng, Cheung Tin-fu, Stephy Tang, Chan Fai-hung
Hong Kong • 1hr 54mins
Opens Hong Kong Sep 12 • I
Grade: B
At one point during an interview regarding the scam she got suckered by, ultra-successful OBGYN/fertility doctor Veronica Yu (Sandra Ng Kwun-yu) tells the cop that “Love, once believed, is real.” That, in a reductive nutshell, is the through-line of writer-turned-director Ho Miu-ki’s debut, Love Lies | 我談的那場戀愛. You could also think of the film as a Hong Kong-ified spin on Dirty John cautionary storytelling mixed with the revitalisation and empowerment of How Stella Got her Groove Back for the digital age – with a dash of The Beekeeper. Now, I’ve seen the trailer for this. Many of us have. Look, it’s right there. Love Lies presents as a pig butchering demi-thriller about a successful, kind of lonely woman scammed out of a bunch of money by a swindling online lothario. Then about halfway through, after Veronica loses her cash, it seems like the scammed and the scammer forge a genuine relationship from the wreckage. Barf. Also yawn.
That most definitely does not happen in Ho’s much more focused, more logical romantic drama, one that raises questions about the public face we put on for the world and the myriad reasons we do so, the hazards of dating in one’s 50s, how and why women still feel compelled to choose between emotional or professional success, and of course the nature and authenticity of love. The scam B-story is a mechanism for the scammer Joe Lee’s (relative newcomer Michael Cheung Tin-fu) growth. There’s no revenge or comeuppance. A product of the sixth edition of the FFFI (pro section), Ho previously dabbled in the lingering Cat III T&A scene, co-penning Naked Ambition 2, two in the LNY All’s Well Ends Well series (2011 and 2012) and the kids’ film Meow. No duh, Love Lies is her most accomplished work (co-written with A Better Tomorrow’s Chan Hing-kai), and despite an out-of-place bit of camp by Stephy Tang and some middle-act repetition, Love Lies hints at an emerging filmmaker with something to say. Bring it.
Ooooh, he likes me
The Chinese title translates to something kind of like “The love I told you I had” or thereabouts, which is actually more indicative of where Ho is going in the film. We meet control freak Veronica when she’s at the peak of her professional life, running a high end private clinic and helping women get pregnant on their terms. Veronica’s a widow, though she was supposed to be a divorcée, and at fiftysomething and alone with her wealth, like so many she takes to a dating app called Matchy. How else do you meet people these days? Talk to them? Fuck that shit. Thing is, Matchy is actually run by a gang of scumbags who woo vulnerable women and scoop up large chunks of their money. The boss is a shady type with his own issues, Mr White (Chan Fai-hung), but Joan (Stephy Tang Lai-yan) is the real brains behind the operation. She writes the romantic and manipulative words of the singles Matchy spits out. One is a Frenchman, “Alain Jeunet”, co-created by Joan and Joe, who’s working the phones because he needs the money and has little in the way of direction. Veronica signs up with a bit of her own subterfuge, presenting as a 25-year-old nurse, and before long she’s smitten, suspicious, and handing over buckets of cash. But then Joe grows a conscience, though he worries less about the ethics of stealing Veronica’s money as about the emotional devastation wrought by his antics with Matchy. He assumes there’s devastation. Veronica’s not so sure.
We pretty much go into Love Lies knowing things are going to blow up in Veronica’s face. It’s in the title, and come on. Dating apps have come under fire for their duplicity, danger and frequent grossness lately – and even John Oliver has gotten into the pig butchering game. All that said, Ho is remarkably pro-dating app throughout the film. Okay, maybe not “pro” but she certainly doesn’t vilify the tech or the hows and whys of people using them. The scam plot is a means to an ends. This is a romance about a woman in her 50s finally defining happiness for herself, with a hefty chunk of drama about learning that she deserves it and maybe accepting love for what it is. Veronica’s final response to her Netflix doc-ready situation is likely to inspire some head-shaking, but it’s also refreshingly sanguine without ever truly excusing the scammers. Who’s to say her dodgy romance was entirely without value – or truth?
Love Lies goes a little haywire in its flights of fancy – no matter how intense the first blush of love/lust no one waters their garden that way – and as mentioned, Tang’s heightened moustache twirling would be a better fit in a film by Pang Ho-cheung or Chapman To. The accidental resolution does the film no favours either. After 90 minutes of carefully measured internalism the burst of melodrama clangs, and the tight FFFI budget could likely have gone to better use elsewhere; Love Lies is pretty rote on the visual level. But Ng reels in her often manic energy for a tightly wound performance as a tightly wound woman taking stock and course-correcting – and maybe finding that companionship she missed earlier on. Guess 50 is the new 30. They should have noted that in the trailer. — DEK