Me, Myself & Irene
Irene Wan is back with more self-love (not that kind you dirty thing).
Once Upon a Lie
Director: Stanley Liu • Writers: Emily Chan, Stanley Liu
Starring: Irene Wan, Bruce Hung, Grace Gua, Hangee Liu
Taiwan • 1hr 26mins
Opens Hong Kong April 17 • IIB
Grade: C
Before diving headlong into what’s deeply, deeply unfortunate about Once Upon a Lie | 謊島美人魚, let’s be clear on one thing. When Tom Cruise, currently 62 Earth years old, makes vanity project films and continues to add to franchises precision engineered to highlight his ongoing virility and badassery we shrug it off and go, “Cool. Planes. And he’s running again.” But when one time starlet and beauty queen – and it must be noted her greatest commodity was her beauty – 58-year-old Irene Wan Pik-ha does the same thing we kind of point and laugh like she’s somehow pathetic. You know what I say to that? Fuck it. You go, gurl. Own it. ’Reney darling, if you want to make a vanity project that is precision engineered to highlight your ongoing sex appeal (like the wannabe skeevy erotic thriller The Fallen) and A-list status (the All About Eve for Hong Kong cinema, Lonely Eighteen, where she was the wise elder), go right ahead.
Which is exactly what Wan’s done, with Irene Production, whose latest paean to Wan is Once Upon a Lie. But this is where Cruise and Wan diverge. Top Gun: Maverick was a roaring entertainment that was also a balm to the movies when it was needed most, and the Mission: Impossible series keeps gleefully upping the action stakes – and spreading the love. C’mon. Henry Cavill’s finest screen moment so far is cocking those guns in that bathroom fight scene in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Wan, so far, seems unwilling to share her key light.
She’s 48. Really
Once Upon a Lie treads a lot of the same ground as Ho Miu-ki’s Love Lies and Lien Chien-hung’s Salli, also from Taiwan, in that they all pivot on “older”, “decrepit”, utterly hideous musty broads – the repulsively fiftysomething Sandra Ng and Esther Liu, a ghastly 38 – falling into online romances with much younger men. In those two films, there was more scamming involved on the part of the men – and those two films also had much more to say about ageing women in a digital world. Once Upon a Lie not so much. And in a fair world, Wan would be taken to task for not using her platform and her resources to say something more. Anything. Alas, it’s hard to draw your attention away from her succession of off-the-shoulder oversized vintage shirts, array of retro-hippy headbands and crocheted tank tops and meticulously placed locks.
Wan plays Li Wen, the 48-year-old proprietor and manager of the Aurora seaside resort. Think Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia! She’s in the middle of a divorce and feeling a bit lonely, so egged on by her young co-worker she creates a profile on a dating app – she calls herself Ora – says she’s 28, and quickly strikes up a long distance romance with struggling screenwriter Chen Le (Bruce Hung Chih-han, Miss Shampoo). Before you can say mistaken identity, Le, his producer pal (Hangee Liu Kuo-shao), and his demetia-afflicted mother (Grace Gua Ah-leh) have checked into the Aurora for two weeks of power writing, wistful reminiscing and what Le hopes will be a fateful meeting with the mysterious Ora. Can you really not guess where this goes?
Once Upon a Lie is cursed with that most debilitating of rom-com illnesses: Lack of chemistry between the leads. Dead-eyed, flat, with mimium physicality (ther’s a lot of frozen Nicole Kidman in Wan’s “performance”) and zero sizzle, this is what I imagine 100% AI filmmaking will look like. The “charming” comedy of errors that results from Wen’s inability to come clean about her filthy, filthy lying never materialises, and it’s hard to muster sympathy for Le’s butt hurt indignation. Did he really think the smoke show in the photos on his app was the person he was talking to? He’s a “smart” writer but he didn’t cotton on to the fact the geezer at the hotel sounds a lot like his dream girl? GTFOH with that. App fibbing is SOP, and with that level of observation it’s no wonder you haven’t written another hit film, dude.
Which could have been a story in itself. The B plot involves Le’s gig writing a mermaid fantasy for a wealthy patron’s daughter. He needs the cash to care for his ill mother, but creativity and contract commitments inevitably clang. The clash between art and commerce is a favourite topic of executive producer Pang Ho-cheung (!) and given this script was co-penned by Madalena writer Emily Chan Nga-lei, the skill set is there for a zanier and more thoughtful diversion. In the end first time director and co-writer Stanley Liu Ming-yin pulled a Chen Le and did as his benefactor demanded and caught Wan from her good side every single time. Mission accomplished.