Love au Zen (2001)

A circle of friends settle matters of life and love in Love Au Zen, another cinema escape to Hong Kong's outlying islands from director Derek Chiu (Sealed With A Kiss). This time round the setting's a Lantau Island monastery, host to contemplation at a remove from the urbanscape a boat ride away.

The excursion begins when securities trader Ah Sau (Poon) vanishes for life on Lantau, learning from his old friend and new master Chi Yuan (Ko). Ah Sau's partner of five years Siu Jing (Chan) is left in the dark, only to see him reappear days later at their friends' wedding. The lovebirds are the high-strung pairing of Mila (Wu) and Cheng (Lin), but their wedding becomes a disaster when the groom stalls five seconds before saying "I do" at the altar. Once Ah Sau returns to the island, the other three eventually follow in hopes of finding answers, clearing the air, or just letting go.

Love au Zen is based around Raymond To's theatre screenplay Love A La Zen; brought to the stage in 1996 by the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre. To's script offers the delivery expected of his work -- low on unnecessary action, high on spirited dialogue among close-knit characters. Chi Yuan's stories and questions add extra colour to the narrative, and are set nicely against Ah Sau's initial following, Siu Jing's questioning and the bickering from Mila and Cheng. With a clear set of characters in a thoughtful situation, Love au Zen offered a lightweight slow-down in the cinemagoing schedule with food for thought and clearing the mind.

The look of the film complements the script with crisp colour on the island and a relaxed pace for the camerawork and score. Exceptional weather makes for some fine vistas, and the monastery, village and rural scenes are captured well. Long shots abound to bring in the backdrop, or to arrange people and locations from overhead to enhance the sense of place. Barring a pop song intro montage, the camera keeps largely to horizontal movements or just stays still, helping create a unified visual standard throughout at a tempo enhancing the film's relaxing charm. With the notable exception of a somewhat underexposed forest sequence perhaps intended as dusk, Love au Zen looks and sounds compelling.

The cast is a pleasure to watch, with lighter actors Andrew Lin and Annie Wu paired to play off each other while the other three leads take their own directions. Flora Chan impresses with her first film role after building her TV acting presence while Poon Chan-leung and Ko Hon-man take to the screen with a natual appeal, apparently benefitting from casting in the original stageplay*. Side characters are a chatty bunch, beefing up Love au Zen's comedy at group events. Come the end of the film, Ko and the two Chans prove worthy players on the big screen, suggesting that the oft-quoted dearth of new talent in Hong Kong cinema may not be so dire if established actors are granted similar lead opportunities more often.

* Note: When Love A La Zen played in the 1996 Hong Kong Arts Festival, Ko Hon-man played Chi Yuan and Poon Chan-leung played Cheng. The play was directed by the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre's Artistic Director Daniel SP Yang and Raymond To was the HKRT's Playwright-in-Residence at the time.

Image credits: The Hong Kong Arts Centre's Love au Zen screening flyer (top right) and Love A La Zen poster (right) from the 1996 Hong Kong Arts Festival programme booklet.

DVD information: The Universe DVD release offers a pleasing presentation. The look is bright, colourful and crisp, though fuzzy briefly in the third chapter. Extras comprise a theatrical trailer, a ten-minute Making Of feature with cast, director, scriptwriter and executive producer interviews, and three biographies (Andrew Lin, Annie Wu and Clifton Ko). The featurette is in Cantonese and unsubtitled, though Flora Chan speaks some English. This film's divided into eight chapters and carries subtitle options in traditional and simplified Chinese, and English. Though credited as a 2000 production, Love au Zen wasn't released to cinemas until Valentine's Day 2001.

Credits:

Directed by Derek Chiu
Original novel and screenplay by Raymond To
Executive producer: Clifton Ko
Cinematography by Tony Cheung
Art direction by Fok Tat-wa
Editing by Marco Mak and Angie Lam
Music by Chan Sau-pok
Starring Flora Chan, Poon Chan-leung, Andrew Lin, Annie Wu and Ko Hon-man