Media review: Soul Mate (七月與安生)

(Source: http://kknews.cc/entertainment/e5858q.html)

Soul mate is a romantic drama film directed by Derek Tsang from Hong Kong in 2016. The film is talking about two girls Ansheung (acted by Zhou Dongyu) and Qiyue (acted by Ma Sichun) were meet at 13 years old, and they had totally different opinion about the world, love, and life. When a boy called Su Jiaming (acted by Toby Lee) appeared, they fell in love with him together and they started different life journey. (Soul Mate 2016)

(Source: https://movie.yahoo-leisure.hk/movie/details/X8Exz-%E4%B8%83%E6%9C%88%E8%88%87%E5%AE%89%E7%94%9F )

Jacques Derrida thinks a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genre-less text. (Chandle 1997) Although director Tsang was defined the genre of film is a romantic drama, but he put another genre hidden into the film that brought an internal meaning of the film. The theme of the film is divided into two levels, one is external and other is internal. The external theme of the film is talking about friendship and love. Through the film plot, the audience is easy to see the importance of friendship and triangle love that is affecting Ansheung and Qique’s friendship. The first impression to the audience like a romantic film. However, the internal theme of the film is talking about the life of everyone and the genre of the film is inspirational. Director uses different disposition of two actresses to reflect everybody’s life. Ansheung and Qique are like a different growing phase of people life. We hope to have a wrestle life when we are young. After the young age, we hope to get a stable life to enjoy.

(Source: https://movie.yahoo-leisure.hk/movie/details/X8Exz-%E4%B8%83%E6%9C%88%E8%88%87%E5%AE%89%E7%94%9F )

On the other hand, the setting of the film also is an attention point. Compare to another film, Soul Mate got 3 different endings in the setting. The first ending is talking about Ansheung meets Jiaming in the MTR and Ansheung was disappear quickly. The second ending is talking about two actresses were exchanged their lifestyle. Ansheung is going pursue stable life and Qique is following Ansheung’s wanderlust life. Then, the last ending is talking about Qique was bore a girl and dead in 27years old. Ansheung takes care her daughter and write a novel called Soul Mate. Normally, the film only has one ending and this film has 3 different ending is very special. Director makes use of the ending to as a mean that makes audience have independent thinking about the internal theme of the film. This is a good method to make audience understanding the film content more and having multi-angle thinking about the film.

(Source: https://movie.yahoo-leisure.hk/movie/details/X8Exz-%E4%B8%83%E6%9C%88%E8%88%87%E5%AE%89%E7%94%9F )

Although the film has not any element of Hong Kong collective memory, but the film is included some essential element of the genre such as a continuity of form and substance based on social reality. The film is surrounding the life of everyone such as lovelorn, have children, marry and have a quarrel with friends. When people were watching the film, they could have a strong consonance of the film. Thus, it is totally reflecting all people’s life.

Finally, I think every people had different opinions after watching the film but I believe you could find a suitable genre to describe the film like David Bordwell notes, said ‘any theme may appear any genre’. (Chandle 1997)

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Official trailer:

Reference:

1.     Chandler, D. (1997). Introduction to genre theory. Retrieved from http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/intgenre/chandler_genre_theory.pdf

2.     Soul Mate 2016, Yahoo! Movies, 27 October 2016, Yahoo! Movies Hong Kong. Available from: https://movie.yahoo-leisure.hk/movie/details/X8Exz-%E4%B8%83%E6%9C%88%E8%88%87%E5%AE%89%E7%94%9F [23 March 2017]