Many people may not be familiar with the name Ye Nianchen, but they must have seen the "love trilogy" of "Exclusive Love", "Very Love" and "My Favorite" directed by him, and his works have successfully established his own unique style in the film industry with the road of "anti-true love and destroying romance", and also injected different colors into traditional Hong Kong-style love movies. The film introduced in this part is a dark love fairy tale by Ye Nianchen, which is "Dear", which was released in 2008 and introduced thriller elements.
The story tells that Wei Qing (Tsang Kai-ying) was angry and left Hong Kong to return to Taiwan because he found out that her boyfriend Ah Wei (Guan Chuyao) was out of the woods. However, not long after, Wei Qing suffered a traffic accident and lost her memory, after waking up from the hospital, she received the news that Ah Wei had died in a car accident, and after the notification of her boyfriend's former friend, Wei Qing returned to Hong Kong to attend Ah Wei's memorial service, during which she once again lived in the nest where she and her boyfriend had lived before breaking up.
In order to retrieve his memory, Wei Qing looked through the relics left by Ah Wei at home every day, and found a letter that had been returned by himself, and he couldn't help but have mixed feelings and was sad. At the same time, she also began to encounter some very strange phenomena, which made her feel inexplicably panicked and uneasy, once, she saw a man's shadow suddenly appear in front of her, he said to Wei Qing that he hoped to be able to ask her forgiveness, and then disappeared, making Wei Qing think that "Ah Wei" had returned to him.
Wei Qing wanted to know more about Ah Wei, so he constantly learned about the situation through Ah Wei's friend Ah Yong (An Zhijie), and finally Ah Yong finally couldn't help but tell her that "Ah Wei is not a good person", it turned out that Ah Wei had been with Maggie before he fell in love with Wei Qing, so Wei Qing was the "third party".
After learning everything, Wei Qing decided to put down all the entanglements in his heart and return to Taiwan, on the way to the airport, Ah Yong suddenly confessed to himself, he told Wei Qing that he had already moved the idea of pursuing her, but because he was preempted by Ah Wei, he decided to quit, and now, he wants to fight for a second chance, Ah Yong's sincere actions and confessions impressed Wei Qing, making her decide to continue to stay in Hong Kong.
In the last ten minutes of the film, all the truth is fully revealed: it turns out that the Ah Wei that Wei Qing saw is actually Ah Yong, and Ah Yong is the real Ah Wei, after Wei Qing's car accident, his mother blamed Ah Wei who was in a state of flux for cheating on his daughter's feelings and opposing the two to continue together, but because Ah Wei could not let go of Wei Qing, he came up with a "fake death" strategy through the latter's amnesia, and later Wei Qing saw strange phenomena including letters in the relics, which were forged by Ah Wei and Ah Yong cooperating with each other. The reason why he laid it out so carefully was that he hoped that Wei Qing could return to his side.
At this time, Wei Qing was eager to tell her next-door neighbor Amin (Yang Aijin) the news that she would not return to Taiwan, but unexpectedly found that the other party had committed suicide a year ago, and the Amin she usually saw and contacted was the "illusion", which also made Wei Qing gradually remember that on the day she and Ah Wei broke up, someone downstairs wanted to kill herself by gas, although she reported to the police, but because she was eager to leave Ah Wei, she did not personally save the suicide. At the end of the film, Wei Qing and Ah Wei, who has just returned home, hug each other tightly, and whether the feelings of the two will fall into another lie and deception next also leave the audience with open imagination and interpretation space.
The biggest highlight of this movie is to package the love story in the way of suspense thriller, the director plays the structure and plays very cleverly, especially the last ten minutes of reversal is the most essential paragraph of the whole film, under the traction of the plot, so that the audience has always thought that the "illusion" seen by the heroine is her dead boyfriend, but the result is the neighbor next door, and people have always thought that An Zhijie plays Ah Yong, did not expect that he is the real Ah Wei, the director took the setting of the heroine's amnesia as the starting point. Through the creation of a strange atmosphere and non-linear editing, the appearance and truth are blurred, and then the effect of "surprise" is achieved.
In terms of essence and core, this "Dear" still expresses director Ye Nianchen's doubts about love, and there is a classic line in the film that says: Sometimes, whether a man lies to you or not depends on whether the woman knows that she has been deceived. Combined with the love story of Wei Qing and Ah Wei in the film, the feelings of the two are basically based on scheming, lies and deception, and even in the end, the reunion of the two is still pregnant with ghosts and cheats, so this film is still a continuation of Ye Nianchen's theme of "love trilogy".
This is Ye Nianchen's first attempt to shoot a thriller, I have to say that many of the horror atmospheres are very good, such as blood footprints on the floor, the sudden appearance of red blood and his own rolling balls and other ideas are quite scary, but because these horror scenes are forged by the male protagonist, so these parts are overheated, the more it is difficult to say the later explanation, it is inevitable that people have a feeling of being too mysterious, and the female number one suddenly put on red clothes in the first half of the movie also became a frightening point, but later This detail did not help the plot to advance, and eventually became inexplicable.
But in general, there are not many love movies like "Dear" in the history of Hong Kong films, if you like dark love fairy tales, or like Ye Nianchen-style love movies, then this film must not be missed.