The Beginning

Why did it feel slightly stitched together? The atmosphere between Chun Jiao and Zhi Ming—or rather, the feeling of the film’s opening stretch—strongly resembled an arthouse film. The camerawork felt casual, and even the focus seemed casual. The early mention of Mandy, Chun Jiao’s closest friend, and her history of supposedly bringing misfortune to her husbands felt like something out of an absurd comedy novel or film. Even when Chun Jiao and Zhi Ming were at odds, everything remained lighthearted. It reminded me of Stephen Chow and Cecilia Cheung in King of Comedy.

The Camerawork

Once Xu Zheng appeared, the entire visual language seemed to change. It became weightier and more delicate, like the sudden difference between something casually filmed on a phone and something shot with a professional camera setup. Perhaps I was simply fixated on his enormous head, but wherever Xu Zheng appeared, the whole style seemed different. Maybe his presence was simply too strong. Then there was Ben, played by Huang Xiaoming. Although he kept saying that people merely told him he looked like Huang Xiaoming, I could not help feeling that he was unable to let the resemblance go. Something about it felt out of place.

I found Miriam Yeung’s scenes the most comfortable to watch. When I was young, I watched her and Richie Jen in Elixir of Love many times. Later, I also watched 2 Become 1. I love scenes with Miriam Yeung in them; they give me the feeling of returning to the past. But why is she so drawn to playing women who cannot find anyone to marry, whether in Elixir of Love, 2 Become 1, or Love in the Buff?

I love the humor and comic beats of films such as Flirting Scholar, King of Beggars, A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora’s Box, Fight Back to School, and Elixir of Love. They probably shaped a large part of my personality.

Finishing Move

But the film at hand is Love in the Buff. Its posters had caught my eye several times before, and I had listened to the songs, though I never understood how they related to the film. Speaking of songs, I think “Finishing Move” suits Love in the Buff even better.

Just one “Why don’t you ever come looking for me?”

No matter how stubborn, how resolute I train myself to be, I can never compare

Please do not touch me again with the practiced ease you once had

While I ask myself how you can still manage to hurt me

Each time Zhi Ming went looking for Chun Jiao, those lyrics returned to me. So what the song describes really does exist, I thought. Because I had not seen Love in a Puff, the first film, and went directly into Love in the Buff, the second, I initially found Zhi Ming rather annoying—extremely annoying, in fact.

Yet I found him annoying because he resembled me, and that made me anxious from somewhere deep inside. He had never grown up. He said he had not matured at all since Form Four, and I seem to be much the same. In high school, I was terribly wrapped up in myself and did little but read novels, as though I could find in them a reason not to take the national college entrance examination. The walls I built around myself then still stand today. I cannot say I have remained completely unchanged, only that I am still self-absorbed.

I have also become much lazier. At least I used to read thematically, take proper notes, and write reflections after finishing something. Now, even when I feel moved to review a film, I struggle to put the feeling into words.

My writing is not as good as it used to be. Perhaps I am simply less adolescent and melodramatic than before. Whenever I think that, however, I also have to admit that I am unwilling to change.

Only when I write without considering anything else does the result truly satisfy me. Perhaps I should find the time to slowly retype what I wrote in the past. I once felt that merely transferring it over would make it seem as though nothing existed in the present—but otherwise, it is as though nothing exists now either.

More Than Romance, I Want to Talk About the Bonds Created by Time

I used to have an unspoken theory: every sensation and emotion fades with time. Whether it is how I feel after finishing a film or novel, or how I feel about another person, once the direct connection ends—once the film or anime finishes, once I stop speaking to someone—the feeling always grows faint. Inevitably so. For a time, this made me profoundly sad.

Schopenhauer’s nihilism seems to be built partly upon this insubstantial quality of memory: when we look back on the past, it can seem so insignificant that it is almost as though nothing ever happened.

Chun Jiao, however, seems to stand firmly against this theory. Her love for Zhi Ming lasts an extraordinarily long time. Even setting affection and romance aside, the two seem bound together by something. Bound, but not tied so tightly that they cannot move. Rather, whenever one of them is about to leave, a thread fastened around their wrist reminds them that the other still exists.

Even if they meet someone better and better and better, that person remains irreplaceable. Perhaps this is what memory leaves behind. The other person is no longer merely someone you either love or do not love; they have come to represent a long stretch of your past—or rather, a large part of yourself.

Chun Jiao says that all the interesting parts of herself the older man, played by Xu Zheng, likes—all her strange ideas—were actually caught from Zhi Ming at some point without her noticing.

When two people spend a long time together, this mutual transmission of habits may bring them closer than any love at first sight ever could. The other person no longer seems to be someone outside the self. They have become part of the self.

Of course, that is only my rather self-centered interpretation. Their relationship may have been nothing like this at all, because the same bond also caused them pain. Chun Jiao said over the phone, “I like you so, so much, but please stop bothering me.”

Why does it have to be so complicated?

The older man was not bad at all. He was practically unbeatable, exactly my type, and funny too. So why did he have to bear it alone?