Story about Twelve Nights / Shap yee yeh / 十二夜 / 12夜
Screenwriter Aubrey Lam Oi-Wah makes her directorial debut under the eye of producer Peter Chan. Whi...
Screenwriter Aubrey Lam Oi-Wah makes her directorial debut under the eye of producer Peter Chan. White-hot Cecilia Cheung and popular singer Eason Chan star as two strangers who meet and fall in love, only to watch their love grow and fade through a succession of 12 nights. They first meet at Cheung’s birthday party, where her busy boyfriend (Ronald Cheng) stands her up. She proceeds to discover that he was supposedly cheating on her, and uses Chan (the boyfriend of pal Nicola Cheung) to dump Ronald.
That was the first night, and in the eleven ensuing non-consecutive nights, we see various stages of love: obsession, self-doubt, jealousy, desire, and the sort of selfishness that is so abundant in real life that it’s painful to watch on the big screen. That’s probably my main complaint with the movie: the petulance and self-centered attitudes displayed by the characters are so prevalent that it leaves hope and true affection with no place to go. These twelve particular nights seem to be the ones that define the death of a relationship, which can be interesting but really feels quite unfulfilling.
Furthermore, the characters are unsympathetic. Sure, this is a film that means to say a lot about relationships, but whatever lessons that are learned could have been learned in the first few minutes. Positioned as an examination of modern love, this film interests but doesn’t affect.
