Fridae

Johnnie To is without a doubt one of modern Hong Kong cinema’s freshest voices despite his years in the business. In the 2000s, he has truly taken off as a consistent director able to deliver the goods no matter what genre he works in.

In the void left by John Woo, To has always stood out for his well-timed, well-paced thrillers showing an uncanny grasp of how to maintain tension. In Don’t Go Breaking My Heart he does that again but applies the same rules for his well-timed thrillers to the romantic comedy. The result is a romantic comedy that is off the wall, more whimsical than it has any right to be, but remains highly entertaining nonetheless. Like his action pictures Exiled and Vengeance this movie has a simple story and setup, but To plays it with such style that the style itself becomes the reason to see the film.

To sets up a basic love triangle: PRC expat Zixin (Gao Yuanyuan) is an analyst in an investment bank who is caught between romantic architect Qihong (Daniel Wu) and her boss, a cocky self-made playboy venture capitalist Shen Ran (Louis Koo). The rest of the film consists of the three players courting, pining, missing, encountering, misunderstanding each other connected to each other via a series of carefully choreographed, almost mathematically arranged comedic sequences mostly built on the plot point that Shen Ran and Fang occupy offices in two buildings facing each other.

The laughs come aplenty, but where this quirky romantic comedy excels is in the fact that Johnnie To and his scriptwriters never choose to make the outcome predictable. Both Shen Ran and Qihong are likable alpha males solely of differing temperament, and viewers will find their sympathies divided equally. Zixin is depicted as an independent woman with a mind and a life of her own, and her shuffles between the two men as well as their dogged pursuits of her basically amount to a process that is as exciting as any chase sequence in To’s action films, but like those action films it moves with its own exciting momentum to a suitably bittersweet place where instead of heads, hearts are broken, and in place of blood, tears are spilled.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart is far less predictable than your average romcom, but while its overflowing whimsy can seem contrived in places, its breathless timing and pacing more than make up for it, and show that it’s not just the story, but just as much as how you tell it, that makes the movie.