Turn Left Turn Right

Year:2003
Director:Johnnie To Kei-Fung, Wai Ka-Fai
Cast:Takeshi Kaneshiro, Gigi Leung Wing-Kei, Edmund Chen , Terri Kwan Wing, Lam Suet, Hui Siu-Hung
Description:
Phase Two of Johnnie
To and Wai Ka-Fai's Pan-Asian plan finds Cantopop
star Gigi Leung and Japan/Taiwan/Hong Kong heartthrob
Takeshi Kaneshiro as parallel strangers fated to miss
one another on the road to love. Like Phase One of
the plan , Turn Left Turn Right features talent
from all over Asia , and a location which is not necessarily
Hong Kong-bound. The inspiration for the film is a
popular illustrated novel by Jimmy Liao, which has
followers worldwide, and not some quickie script cooked
up by Wai Ka-Fai and the Milkyway screenwriting braintrust.
The goal of all this Pan-Asianess is to find financing
and audiences across Asia, thus identifying all of
Asia as a larger cinematic force, and not as pockets
of smaller, varying talent. Their plan is smart, logical
and utterly worthy; getting Asia and not just Korea/Hong
Kong/Japan on the global cinema map is a good lead
to future financing and possible better productions.
But it goes without saying that a good movie would
help too.
Kaneshiro is John Liu, a
struggling violinist who lives alone in a Taipei apartment
far too cushy for someone of his dubious occupation.
Despite being played by Takeshi Kaneshiro, John is
a shy loner who has practically no friends. Instead,
he's a too-kind romantic whose heart beats for a girl
he's never really known. That girl was an unknown
crush from some high school trip, who has magically
transformed into Eve Choi , a struggling
translator who also lives alone in a Taipei apartment
far too cushy for someone of her dubious occupation.
Eve is also a dreamy loner, who longs to translate
Polish love poems instead of knocking off the latest
paperback blockbuster for her publishers. She also
has a longtime crush: for a boy who once helped her
on some high school trip. That boy magically transformed
into Takeshi Kaneshiro, etc., who besides longing
for her happens to live RIGHT NEXT DOOR. Yep, the
two star-crossed lovers live in adjoining apartment
buildings separated by one brick wall, and the only
reason they never meet is because every day one turns
right and the other turns left.
Luckily that all changes
within the first twenty minutes of the film. The two
happen by the same park fountain, where they proceed
to help one another when their respective paperwork
gets
knocked into the fountain. What they discover all
too soon is that each is the other's long-desired
other. That quick revelation turns into a dream-date
day, as the two spend their time playing with local
pets, teasing local babies, and riding the carousel
at the park to their hearts' content. They also, laugh,
mug and generally giggle to reams of tinkly piano
music. It's good that Johnnie To handles things with
a light, ironic touch, as it makes things seem less
saccharin than they probably really are. The performers
are attractive, the music pleasing, and the art direction
atmospherically sound. The preceding twenty minutes
of parallel narrative devices seems to float
by, and the film, while not creating any real drama,
looks to have some promise. The lovers seem poised
to match their destinies with their desires梬hat
more could any movie romantic want?
Sadly, IT ALL GOES TO
HELL. Not the film necessarily, but the characters
get booked on the express to potential lover hell.
Eve and John part ways quickly after their date, managing
to trade only phone numbers and not their actual names.
You see, it starts to rain and their landlords turn
up, and the characters want to avoid them, so they
part quickly and hastily scribble their phone numbers
down, but the numbers get smudged by the rain, and
both catch mega-bad colds, which means THEY CANNOT
CONTACT EACH OTHER. Despite the fact that they live
right next door to one another, they have no idea
how to find the other, and as the two continue to
grow sicker, their parallel lives grow increasingly
despondent and predictable. Basically, if you see
one thing happen to one character, then you know the
exact same thing will happen to the other. While amusing,
such devices can grow old rather soon.
Enter two of the most
excruciatingly hateful "other people" in
the romantic comedy universe: Dr. Hu
and Ruby . Ruby is a waitress/delivery
girl at a local fast-food eatery, and manages to deliver
the exact same meals to both John and Eve. She quickly
picks up on their mutual distress over losing the
other's phone number, but she doesn't do the magnanimous梠r
even remotely human梩hing by revealing the other's
location. Nope, instead she decides that John is her
fated one, and attempts to prevent the two from ever
meeting. Ruby also spends her time acting spiteful,
possessive, downright disrespectful , and generally makes young Taiwanese girls
look really, really bad, even if they are cute, full-lipped
and wear pigtails as well as Terri Kwan does. Kwan
received a Best Supporting Actress nomination at this
year's Golden Horse Awards for her performance in
Turn Left Turn Right, which should trigger
an inquiry into who the hell decides the nominations,
and what they were smoking when they did. This isn't
to say that Kwan's performance is necessarily bad,
but she really doesn't add anything to a rather one-note,
unlikable character.
Still, Kwan is Zhang
Ziyi when compared with Edmund Chen, who plays Gigi
Leung's would-be suitor with the subtlety and debonair
charm of a rabid pitbull. As Dr. Hu, Chen mugs, shouts,
overacts, and pretty much acts his materialistic,
self-involved yuppie stock character to the hilt.
When Eve gets sent to the hospital , Hu recognizes her as a former college
classmate, and then decides that SHE WILL BE HIS.
He then takes her sickness as an opportunity to move
into her apartment, shower in her bathroom, leave
his stinky socks lying around, and even occasionally
expose himself to her. Naturally, she wants little
to do with him, but since she really has no friends,
she puts up with his crap. Meanwhile, he forms an
alliance with Ruby to keep John and Eve apart, which
leads to the most obvious plot development imaginable
and more frustration for an audience who would simply
like to see the pretty popstars get together. After
awhile, keeping John and Eve apart just seems silly
and downright unbelievable.
Then again, knocking
Turn Left, Turn Right for its lack of realism
and generally lazy storyline is somewhat unfair, because
this is a fairy tale about love and fate with very
little room for actual reality. John and Eve don't
really exist as characters, but instead as idealized
romantics who have no lives other than their noble,
artistic professions ,
and debilitating need for their missing soulmate.
Likewise, Ruby and Dr. Hu have very little humanity,
and seem to be self-involved, spiteful characters
who should get a severe beating from anyone with an
ounce of humanity. The actors all excel at their types,
but the fact that they don't really inhabit characters
reveals the film to be nothing more than an airy confection
that uses romantic concepts as a potential hook. It may be
possible for some audiences to care about John and
Eve because they're played by Takeshi Kaneshiro and
Gigi Leung, but is that really a good enough reason
for everyone?
In its defense, Turn
Left Turn Right has some cleverness and quirky
appeal for its "parallel lives" narrative
devices, which help the film stay afloat even as those
same devices start to grow stale. Johnnie To's efficient
direction keeps things moving, and even when the quirkiness
gets tired , there is some amusement
to be gleamed. The film works overtime to keep its
star-crossed lovers apart, so eventually one will
have to wonder: how will they get these two together?
Sooner or later it becomes just too silly for all
of this to keep going on, and the fact that it continues
to amuse even after it starts to get old shows that
Johnnie To knows how to do something. He can direct
fluff with the same agility and skill that he brings
to his personal films, and even though the result
can be as inconsequential and downright unnecessary
as Turn Left Turn Right, the charm of the proceedings
is not entirely lost. It's likely that some people
will find Turn Left Turn Right likable enough
fluff, which is great for those who demand very little
from their cinema experiences. On the other hand,
those who expect more might point out that To has
made this sort of fluff before, only much, much better.
It may survive okay on its own, but with Needing
You as a yardstick, Turn Left Turn Right
doesn't really measure up.