Early on in “Love After Love,” director Ann Hui introduces viewers to an astonishing shade of green, an emerald green luxuriance that radiates from the foliage around a mansion in Hong Kong on the eve of World War II. If only the rest of the overlong feature film was so memorable.
Love After Love is Hui’s 30th film and an adaptation of a short story by novelist Eileen Chang, whose fiction she has now used in three films. Hui, who rose to fame in the 1980s as the director of the Hong Kong New Wave, is less well-known in the West.
This film is a sufficient showcase for Hui’s craftsmanship, but it lacks the emotional depth or resonance that the composed images, lofty setting and melodramatic stakes would suggest.
The film, now streaming on Mubi, shows sympathy for young protagonist Ge Weilong (Sandra Ma), who comes from Shanghai to live and work for her cold, aristocratic Aunt Liang (Faye Yu) in Hong Kong while she receives an education. follows. Attending the banquets and high-society functions of Hong Kong’s international upper class, her aunt’s social circle, Weilong finds herself unconsciously under George’s gaze. (Eddie Peng), a former lover of her aunt’s with an oversized Don Juan character.
What could make for a compelling story with a cross-border love triangle is ineffective, even on a micro level. Interactions between characters feel hollow, no matter how well-lit or well-cast the scenes, with a passionless non-end that has little substance to say about the period or its social mores. Still, the bright spots in ‘Love After Love’ may prompt the viewer to look for more robust works in Hui’s cherished oeuvre.
love after love
Not judged. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 24 minutes. Look at Mubi.