Half ‘Measure’
a time and space shifting romance about class division and late-stage capitalism? How can this go wrong?
Measure in Love
Director: Kung Siu-ping • Writers: Kung Siu-ping, Bernyce Li Pak-kiu, Sylvia Chang
Starring: Greg Hsu, Angela Yuen, Jack Tan, Stephen Tung, Chan Fai-hung
Hong Kong / Taiwan • 1hr 52mins
Opens Hong Kong October 3 • IIA
Grade: C+
In some unspecified time and place (though it looks remarkably like Hong Kong in 2024), the world has suffered a catastrophic earthquake and literally split in two. It’s divided by a gravity wall, on one side the affluent, shiny Aurora Zone, where gravity and the march of time as we know them are fairly normal. On the other side of the wall is the grimy, poverty-stricken Evergreen Zone, where gravity is much lower and time moves much faster. The gravity wall has come down in the middle of the sea, visible as a perpetual, dangerous storm cloud that can get worse under the right circumstances. Into this harsh environment comes squeaky clean doctor Ann-Jean (Angela Yuen Lai-lam), an Aurora resident who’s so close to her medical licence she can taste it, and the pre-teen – for now – Tato, a kid from the wrong side of the wall who steals to get by. They meet when Ann-Jean follows her mentor, Dr Chow (Chan Fai-hung) and his Médecins Sans Frontières-type humanitarian group the White Doves, into Evergreen one day to render medical aid to its impoverished citizens. She meets Tato when he fakes an injury that will help his little brother Mato with a chronic illness get into the clinic. For him it’s love at first sight. With time running differently for each of them, when she comes back a few days later he’s a teenager, and in another few days he’s Greg Hsu Kuang-han (Marry My Dead Body).
And therein lies the conflict for the Romeo and Juliet-type grand romance at the heart of debuting director Kung Siu-ping’s Measure in Love | 他年她日, a fantastical commentary on late-stage capitalism and the damage it inflicts as a byproduct of our collective mad dash to material wealth – that’s buried way, way, way under a sugary love story that lacks the urgency even a hint of the film’s undercurrents contain. If that’s the movie you want to see, go to One Battle After Another. If it’s goo-goo eyes and (unearned) sentimentalism you prefer, stick around.
Aaah… class division
Producer and co-writer Sylvia Chang Ai-chia’s fingerprints are all over Measure in Love, which she produced with Kung as part of the Arts Development Council’s Director’s Succession Scheme. How much Chang moulded the film into one of her preferred relationship dramas is anyone’s guess (my guess: quite a bit) but it’s a shame the socio-political science-fiction leaning elements didn’t get a little more room to breathe; personally, it’s the better story and it has the visuals to match. Once the film gets over its The Time Traveler’s Wife phase – Ann-Jean and Tato meet when he’s a child, and to Kung’s credit Ann-Jean initially relates to him as such – she starts visiting Evergreen more often, where a year passes for every day in Aurora. Every time Ann-ean makes the crossing Tato’s aged by leaps and bounds, and before you know it, his childhood partner in theft Hao-yi (Han Pui-yiu) is a grown woman and Tato’s little brother Mato (Jack Tan Chek-yao) is caring for a pregnant neighbour (Natalie Hsu En-yi) and her daughter (Yoyo Tse Wing-yan) into adulthood despite his lifelong illness. Things come to a head when a superstorm lashes the city and threatens to royally fuck up the gravity wall, maybe separating everyone for good.
Ann-Jean’s crossing raises a bunch of questions the film itself never really asks or answers: How is Ann-Jean in love with Tato after a few days? He’s an ace thief, so why didn’t Tato steal anything from Aurora after making the effort to go in the first place? Why is medical care for Evergreen’s working class illegal? If you’re the type to get hung up on those kinds of questions in such an aggressively fantastical story, your palms will itch you’ll be so irritated by the time it’s over. But to be fair the “They’re in love after 48 hours” trope is as old as the movies, and it’s the foundation for the equally ludicrous A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, which similarly demands viewers shed any concept of logic in order to get swept along in the story’s world. Suspension of all disbelief is a must – kind of like the idea that warp speed will get you across the galaxy in a few hours, or that a single dude called Ethan Hunt will save the world. Fantasy.
Measure in Love has so many ideas and themes lurking in its shadows it makes it even more distressing that Kung and co-writers Chang and Bernyce Li Pak-kiu (Ying Chi-wen’s Life Must Go On) don’t let the issues about increasingly selective immigration, the wealth gap, environmental devastation, eroding civil rights, unequal health care access and otherwise divided people float to the surface. It is, after all, what sci-fi does best. Technically, VFX honcho Alex Lim Hung-fung, production designer Man Lim-chung and veteran sound editor Tu Duu-chih do some tremendous work with what was likely a modest budget, doing a spectacular job of making Hong Kong look sparklingly futuristic as well as like a broken down failed free market, underscoring the ideas about abundance and scarcity. And it’s just anonymous enough to read whatever you like into the space; this could be the Koreas, Gaza and Israel, Russia and Ukraine, Hong Kong and Kowloon, the United States and … everyone. These are universal problems.
But the main focus is on the relationship between Tato and Ann-Jean, even with brothers Dr Chow, who lives in Aurora, and Pops (Stephen Tung Wai) in Evergreen, and all they represent right there for the taking. In a strange turn for a romance, Hsu’s Tato is the more compelling character, which may have something to do with Hsu’s overwhelming charm and Yuen’s uncharacteristically static performance. He’s charismatic enough to make me forgive the scene where he takes Ann-Jean to a party with his peeps, a classic movie shorthand for Poor/Oppressed People Have More Culture and Know How to Have a Good Time (see: Dirty Dancing, Titanic) and to wave off some of his more boneheaded decisions. Measure in Love is as divisive as the wall at the centre of the story, a take it or leave it proposition that could easily make everyone cry. The reasons, however, being entirely subjective.