A high school teacher once taught me that everytime something is invented, something else gets replaced. Cars replaced horse carriages. Emails replaces letter writing. QR code ordering replaces restaurant service.
With all its multiple connective social functions, smartphones have indeed turned the world into a much lonelier place.
Love Lies explores that modern loneliness, and finding love and connection in the smartphone era. It's distinctly a story about love, rather than a love story.
Dr. Veronica Yu, a renowned recently-widowed gynecologist, joins a dating app and falls for French engineer Alain Jeunet.
It's revealed that Veronica is a victim of an internet fraud. Alain Jeunet is played by Joe Lee, a young man freshly recruited by a local crime syndicate that specializes in running scams via dating apps.
First-time director Ho Miu Ki, screenwriter of Stephen Chow's Mermaid, hooks the audience cross-cutting between Veronica and Joe's storylines, highlighting the irony between what's being imagined online and what's actually happening behind the scenes in reality.
There are laughs, even though strictly speaking, it's not a comedy.
The mood is clean and pristine, filled with long contemplative silences, like the film's wearing noise-canceling headphones. This uncomfortable stark silence, with nobody around, evokes the feeling of loneliness.
Sandra Ng and MC Cheung Tin-fu give solid performances, playing their roles completely straight and giving the sense that despite that their interaction is a lie across digital space, there's a tinge of an unspeakable connection there.
Stephy Tang's Joan stuck out as a character that can only exist in movies. She's a fraud schemer but happens to be attractive, dressed scantily-clad, looking like she's about to go clubbing. I'd imagine the real case to be a much sketchier and creepier person.
The story ends on an odd message that suggests love exists in one's mind, and that as long as one thinks it's happening, then it's real. It's a seemingly woeful and profound note to end on, like ending a piano ballad with a stretched out minor notes.
I don't buy that sentiment. Having read recent articles about loneliness being a public health issue in our current age of handheld devices, I am sure a lot of people would disagree and say, "No, love can't just be in my mind. Love has to be reciprocated to be real. Someone give it to me now!"
