Kelvin Tong’s latest “art” film Love Story is convoluted and pretentious.
If Love Story is the benchmark of what a good local film should be, then Singapore is in serious s**t. This Kelvin Tong directed “art” Mandarin film, which took home the Best Director accolade at the recent Silver Screen Awards during the Singapore International Film Festival, is a horrific exercise in utter pretentiousness. Centering on the escapades of a novelist and his complicated love life, Love Story weaves in and out of the worlds of fact and fiction. One thing’s for sure, this wannabe 2046 (Wong Kar Wai’s equally banal film about an author and his numerous affairs) is convoluted, confusing and uninspired.
TV actor Allen Lin Yi Lun plays the film’s protagonist, a writer embroiled in an ambiguous murder-mystery puzzle. While finishing a new book, the line between fantasy and reality gets blurred as he is drawn into a murder case—while developing relationships with several women. They are a quirky cop (Ericia Lee), a socially dysfunctional librarian (Evelyn Tan), a theater usher who hides half her face (Tracy Tan), and a young punk rocker (local band Electrico’s Amanda Ling). Thus, Love Story traces the writer’s fleeting affairs with the four women, while another mysterious figure, simply known as “the actor” (an annoying Benjamin Heng), is thrown into the mix.
Despite the film’s many characters, none actually resonates, no thanks to the director’s indulgent and pointless script. Throughout the film, Tong waxes lyrical about the meaning and realness of love and beauty, but the script comes across like a half-baked tone poem that hardly sticks. The substandard acting here doesn’t help either. Apart from Allen Lin Yi Lun and Ericia Lee, who share good chemistry, the rest of the cast is disappointing. The supremely amateurish Amanda Ling, in particular, is grating as she tries to act angsty, sexy and nonchalant—but is not very good at any of them; while Benjamin Heng fails in his bid to channel comedian Stephen Chow, and falls flat on his face.
As the movie spirals to its haphazard end, it gets more and more aggravating and unfocused, making it one of the worst local films we’ve seen. You have no idea how bad this film is until you’ve sat through this painful and loveless ordeal.