Starring: Richie Jen (aka Richie Ren), Fan Bingbing, Yuen Wah, Ian Powers, Kate Tsui
Director: Alfred Cheung
Scheduled release: Now showing

Time was when an Alfred Cheung-helmed film – and one with Ng See Yuen (Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow; Drunken Master) as its producer to boot – could, for better or worse, be nothing else but a Hong Kong movie. But in the past decade or so, the film personality who remains most associated with the Her Fatal Ways series has been going international: first, with a Japanese co-production (No Problem) and then the English language Manhattan Midnight that yielded fewer dividends than its backers must have hoped for and probably had a hand in ensuring that this originally Mandarin language production is Cheung’s first theatrical release in years.

Contract Lover has been dubbed into Cantonese for its run in Hong Kong. The romantic comedy about a young woman (Fan Bingbing) contracted to pose as the lover of a not-at-all-fat man called Fat (Richie Jen) – who worries his traditional-minded family will not accept his thoroughly modern girlfriend – also boasts local faces like Yuen Wah and Kate Tsui (though, fans, take note, she doesn’t have much screen time here). Nonetheless, its Mainland Chinese provenance is clear enough from the Mandarin out-takes that appear as the end credits roll and from the movie being set entirely north of the Hong Kong-Mainland Chinese border.

Then there are the few asides that make for potentially interesting socio-cultural commentary on China’s north-south/rural-urban divide and the radical changes in some people’s perspectives in recent decades. Still, they probably won’t make even one quarter of the impact on viewer memories that the movie’s pole-dancing scenes will! For those really are pretty funny; one, involving face-pulling, gyrating martial artists in training, is particularly hilarious.

Contract Lover’s best and funniest scene by far doesn’t actually involve any of its main characters directly. That is not to say Fan isn’t given ample opportunity to shine in her role as Joe Lau, the titular female with the masculine-sounding name who wins over the hearts of an entire family – maybe even village – while trying to do the opposite. On the other hand, Jen doesn’t get all that much to do besides look physically good enough to attract the affections of two women and a man.

It is only logical, then, that this film’s male lead ends up overshadowed by its female star, the scene-stealing veteran actor who plays his father, and Ian Powers (who plays Joe’s good – and very gay – friend Alex). Something else that’s obvious is that Contract Lover plays better as a comedy than a romance. Also, even while this neither original nor ambitious work will not go down as a classic, it does seem capable of generating enough laughs and winning Mainland China’s Fan some new Hong Kong fans.

Yvonne Teh