Marriage with a Fool

Year:2006
Director:Patrick Kong
Cast:Alex Fong Lik-Sun, Stephy Tang Lai-Yun, Pace Wu , Sasha Hou Sa-Sa,Leila Tong Ling, Wong Cho-Lam, Kayle Kwan Ji-Tung, Marco Ngai Chun-Kit, Theresa Fu Wing, Shaun Tam Chun-Yin, Chan Sau-Chu, Philip Ng Won-Lung, Fire Lee Ka-Wing, Tin Kai-Man, Vincent Kok Tak-Chiu
Description:
On March 23rd, 2006, two films starring Alex Fong Lik-Sun
were released in Hong Kong Cinemas. Having resources
to see only one of the two, I ended up checking out
Marriage with a Fool, produced by Mei Ah Film
Entertainment with an assist from Gold Label, the artist
management company run by Paco Wong. In the film, Fong
and fellow Gold Label labelmate Stephy Tang
play newlyweds who find their picture-perfect marriage
challenged by a variety of circumstances, among them
the return of an old flame, money problems, and general
incompatibility. Other circumstances that get in the
young couple's way: screenwriting, direction, and just
misguided filmmaking. Basically, Marriage with a
Fool is a bad movie. And if you're a Hong Kong film
fan residing in the Western Hemisphere, you may be asking,
"Who is this Alex Fong guy anyway?"
First of all, this isn't
the stoic, sometimes cool Alex Fong from such films
as One Nite in Mongkok, Double Tap, or - if you're really stuck in the past - Pretty Woman.
That's Alex Fong Chung-Sun. We're talking here
about Alex Fong Lik-Sun, the former Olympic athlete
who moved from swimming to singing, and finally to celluloid.
He also appears in about a zillion advertisements, and
that's just the tip of his overexposure resume. Besides
having two films open the same week, Fong is also pushing
rice in shirtless ads in MTR stations all over Hong
Kong, plus he hawks local eatery Cafe de Coral with
DJ Sammy AND he even pushes a local electronics retailer
alongside Gold Label pals Stephy Tang and Theresa Fu.
Stephy and Theresa are also in Marriage with a Fool,
which possesses songs by superstar Ronald Cheng, who
also belongs to - you guessed it - Gold Label. Once
you decipher the degrees of separation, Hong Kong Entertainment
casting can be knee-slapping fun. It's like a popstar
jigsaw puzzle coming together, or a bizarre game of
Cantopop connect the dots. For management types, it's
called synergy.
But no amount of fun facts
can save Marriage with a Fool from being a bad
movie. The film opens with Wah and Bobo
getting it on during their first night of wedded bliss.
The two immediately begin fighting - while relentlessly
snogging - over whether to keep the light on or not,
which qualifies as marital issue number one. Number
two shows up real quick. The two bicker over taking
an expensive vacation; Bobo wants to go, but Wah doesn't,
because he's a rather poor fellow who works in a pet
store with his crappy buddies. Bobo works in a karaoke
joint alongside her main female friends, where they
get to comment on their customers. Various couples break up
and make up at the karaoke, which leads to some existential
conversation about how working in a karaoke joint can
show you the full range of life . Sadly,
Bobo and her pals are supremely suspicious of Wah. From
minute one, they seem to be expecting him to stray,
and if a phone call doesn't get answered, it MUST mean
that the guy is cheating. What distrustful women.
Sadly, the women do have
reason to distrust Wah. Though he seems like a standup
guy, Wah still has a minor thing for his former tutor
Josephine , and behaves like a guilty dope
when pressed about his friendship with her. This leads
to one clever comedy bit - Wah and his buddies race
home to convince Bobo that they were at home watching
football instead of courting women - but it also hammers
home the film's relentless point: this marriage is doomed
to fail. Which it does, leading to a separation and
romantic entanglements with other parties. Writer-director
Yip Lim-Sum manages to create fairly
realistic characters. Both Wah and Bobo are seemingly
likable people, but their flawed humanity leads them
to misunderstandings - which start out minor, but soon
escalate into things that cannot be undone. As the flawed
couple, Alex Fong and Stephy Tang are effective, and
manage to run the full gamut of emotions in a fairly
convincing fashion. Human beings are generally petty,
wildly emotional, and even pathetic creatures, and both
actors seem willing to put those emotions onscreen.
At least the couple seems real.
However, whatever reality
the film creates is submarined by a contrived story
and questionable filmmaking. Though Bobo and Wah experience
a fairly realistic breakup, the circumstances that follow
descend into standard movieland. Bobo finds near-romance
with a wacky toilet paper salesman, who steals toilet
paper from the karaoke for research, and spends hours
dispensing the redeeming qualities of 3-ply TP. People
start acting less like people and more like programmed
screenwriter mouthpieces, spouting undue metaphor or
behaving noble in blatantly unrealistic ways. Also,
the film is full of pace-killing flashbacks. The flashbacks
are effective in the beginning, as they illuminate past
events from different perspectives. However, by the
end of the film, the flashbacks start to occur simply
to compensate for neglected exposition. When the climactic
meeting between the estranged couple occurs, we're treated
to no less than two flashbacks DURING their meeting,
each bearing a narrative purpose that's completely transparent.
The overdone emotions and painfully obvious music cues
seal the deal. Maybe they tried to make a good film,
but the filmmakers didn't go about it the right way.
To the film's credit,
it doesn't rely on cute shenanigans like most of its
contemporaries, and even attempts a bit of thematic
complexity towards the end. Still, the ending seems
tacked on, not to mention a little self-important, especially
after some of the cloying plot devices employed only
ten minutes earlier. It's great to want to have your
movie do more than just entertain, bit meaning should
be earned. Marriage with a Fool doesn't, and
smacks audiences with an ending that only makes everything
that happened before it seem fruitless. You might find
some truth to what the film finally says, but the way
in which the film got there doesn't feel true at all.
It just feels inappropriate, and ultimately unsatisfying.
Like some marriages, Marriage with a Fool has
good intentions, but the execution and outcome tarnish
everything.