Synopsis
Rarified love in shangri-la.
After his new bride dumps him at their wedding reception, a heartbroken actor winds up in the mountains, where he meets and falls in love with a widowed fan.
2012 ‘高海拔之戀 II’ Directed by Johnnie To
After his new bride dumps him at their wedding reception, a heartbroken actor winds up in the mountains, where he meets and falls in love with a widowed fan.
High Altitude of Love II, 高海拔之戀II, 高海拔之恋2, 高海拔之恋Ⅱ, 고해발지련 2, Romancing in the Air, Truyện Tình Trên Non Cao
so.
5 years ago, when i was constantly suicidal, suffering from daily struggles with depression and social anxiety and gender dysphoria, i was put into a mental institution in order to stop my third suicide attempt that week. one of the therapists there gave me some of the best advice in my entire life. she asked me if i had any reasons to live, any reasons to work past the pain that afflicted me, any reason to go on after i was released back into the world. i said no. she then told me 'well, if you can't accept any reasons that i or someone else could give you, you have to give yourself a reason to live. you have…
For P.
It felt like forever. So long I wandered aimlessly around the forest, shivering among its thickets, cuts and bruises forming, lost with the spins in a fit of confusion as to which way to go, where to turn next, for the sharp chill of the darkness left me cold to the world and I wondered how I would ever find my way to the open end of the timberline. Then all of a sudden, you appeared as if made manifest from the branches, beauty personified like the kind found only in the very same natural habitat I was lost in. We brought, the both of us, the weight of two pasts we had each hoped to forget—with flecks…
To's work is already so outlandishly stylish it borders on the postmodern even at its most straightforward, but ironically, ROMANCING's breakdown of the barrier between the real world and the populist cinema that subtly informs our pop culture relies on some of his most nuanced, elegant direction. The process is so gradual and carefully layered that only at the end do the full implications of the manipulations life and cinema exert on each other become fully manifest as the source of both elation and sorrow. This is a major work, not merely by To but any director working today.
Action! - Johnnie/Ringo's Hong Kong Actions: In The Mood For King To's Sweeping Realism
Johnnie To continues with his mainstream romantic films, this time about a famous actor who ends up finding true love after publicly losing it and falling into both depression and public shame.
Though it lacks originality and adheres to many of the genre conventions associated with such a concept, fans of this type of romantic picture will likely enjoy it. Koo and Cheng are both excellent, and their combined efforts as these two characters progressively fall in love are a joy to see. To's direction is solid, and, once more, quite standard for a director of his kind. The cinematography and music are both good, albeit…
The story of my life has always been a story of movies. As far back as I can remember I’ve been watching them, to the degree that many of my earliest memories involve movies. My first obsession came from even before that, though — when I was just 2 and a half years old, I begged my family to take me to Cars at least once a week. I’ve been told I saw Cars over a dozen times during its initial theatrical release, and though I can’t remember it at all, I know the spark was there.
The first love I had that I can remember was the Lord of the Rings series. Friends of my family held something called…
the damsel-falling-in-love-with-her-favorite-actor trope? YES please.
•romancing in thin air
•the purple rose of cairo
•mulholland drive
•lost in translation (?)
•persona (?)
•camp rock
EDIT: OMG CRITERION’S RELEASING the heroic trio!!!!
One of the most profoundly cathartic and validating works of art I have ever seen. Impossible to explain how much this moved me, all I can say is that it made me want to live a little more. Comfort cinema in the deepest, most transcendent sense.
Review for InReview Online's Best of the Decade:
A Hong Kong movie star played by Louis Koo is jilted at the altar by Gao Yuanyuan, his longtime on and off-screen partner. He drinks his way to the top of the world, somewhere high in the mountains of China called Shangri-La, the name of James Hilton’s Orientalist no-place in Lost Horizon. There he is reluctantly nursed back to sobriety by Sammi Cheng, a hotelier whose husband disappeared in the woods seven years earlier. Koo’s response to loss is alcohol: the obliteration of consciousness, Cheng’s is stasis—she keeps everything exactly the way it was when her husband left, machines, decor, liquor, everything. Koo eventually learns the story of her husband’s disappearance. To…
Johnnie just casually staking his claim to be the best director in the world working today....
To embrace loss, you must share and understand the gift of those memories and times, not be burdened by them or bury them away....
I can't remember the last time I felt real happiness. It's something I've always tried to find in other things and other people, so I thought even the littlest moments that could bring me ephemeral contentment would be enough. I was probably a happy kid, but I've barely got any memories of anything good, and I guess they've just been buried under all the hurt of recent years. I thought I could go on without a direction, but it's ended up with me living every day in pain, waiting for it to end. I feel that I'm just wandering throughout life without a meaning or a reason to go on with every day. Whenever I feel like I completely can't…
Everyone has skeletons in their closet. Not shit you’ve done, or even shit that’s been done to you, sometimes it’s just shit that happened that you couldn’t do anything about. It could be as simple as an opportunity you missed, or something as heavy as a lost loved one. I don’t know what you’ve got in your past, only mine. What I do know is the shit that’s happened to you doesn’t just disappear. It lingers, it pollutes, it gnaws, it consumes your every waking moment. I know because that was my life for a long, long time, and that’s the life of everyone I know. It ebbs and flows in its intensity, but until you make peace with it,…