When I first rented "Lu Cha" (aka "Green Tea"), I was expecting a typical movie. What I got was the single greatest romance film in motion picture history.The first (and most obvious) compliment to be made is with regard to the cinematography and scoring – which are simply magnificent. The opening 5 minutes are mind-blowing in terms of sheer style. Jiang Wen enters the coffee shop and the beautiful Zhao Wei is caught in a slow-motion tracking shot that is complimented with a catchy score of string instruments and beats – a scene that I fear will wear out the "Rewind" button on my remote control. And who would have thought that tea leaves swirling in a glass of hot water could be so mesmerizing? Listen folks, sequences like these are the reason cameras were made.The acting is also top notch. My first experience with Zhao Wei was the action film "So Close" (2002), which (despite being one of my personal favorites) wasn't exactly demanding of her talents. "Lu Cha" was the film that convinced me of her exceptional acting ability. One scene in particular that grabs me every time is when Zhao talks about her friend who can read tea leaves. She raises an eyebrow and taps the side of her drinking glass in such a natural way that I begin to forget that I'm watching an actress because her character is realism personified. It might sound like a trivial thing, but when you string a bunch of seemingly trivial, realistic mannerisms together over the course of 90 minutes, you end up with a great acting performance – and Zhao Wei has definitely "in the zone" while making this film. Jiang Wen compliments her very well, but one can tell that Zhao is doing the leading here.Intelligence and complexity are frequently showcased in movies from countries who make quality romance films on a consistent basis (Japan, China, South Korea, etc.). "Lu Cha" is a glorious example. It's no surprise to read reviews by viewers who are confused at some of the meaning behind certain scenes. For example, we see a middle aged man who is (inaudibly) yelling at the camera outside a window, only to then walk away angrily. Notice how he reacts to his beat-up car in disgust, which reflects the fact that he was of middle class wealth (at best). I had some difficulty understanding what this scene meant, until I realized that the previous conversation between Zhao and her blind date was about materialism. Her date attempts to promote idealism and spirituality, but Zhao counters with stories about her friend who only dates rich men for their endearing qualities. Zhao apparently didn't like this date very much, which explains why she turns his tactics against him in an effort to make him angry – which apparently worked. The strength of the script is evident in this scene because during the blind date the man is not shown on camera (a frequent strategy in "Lu Cha"). You only see him after the date is over, which forces the viewer to connect his reaction and car condition to the previous conversation. This is a heck of a lot more entertaining than the Hollywood method, which would simply have a wide shot of both persons talking and insulting each other with inept dialogue.This movie is jam-packed with these hyper-intelligent set pieces. One scene has the camera cut to Jiang's cigarette ash falling, which means that he's so gripped on Zhao's story that he completely forgets that a cigarette is in his hand. The scene where Jiang pulls the shirt over his eyes and looks from outside the window represents how affected he has become by her story. The girl in his friend's bed plays with the viewer's mind in thinking that it could possibly be Zhao because his buddy covers her up immediately, but a few minutes later she is revealed to be a different woman. In yet another scene the personalities of Zhao begin to overlap each other when her piano persona begins to drink green tea and talk about her mother who has a glove factory (which is a reference to her graduate girl persona's story).This is nothing less than a non-stop exhibition of amazing scriptwriting. I can think of no other romance film that peppers the viewer with such cerebral exercise, and it benefits greatly from it. Stuff like this is the reason I don't watch American movies anymore. It's not that I'm snobby or an art-house freak. It's because East Asian romance films kick their American counterparts up and down the block like rag dolls. It's not even close.I lose sleep with the horrid thought of missing the sheer enjoyment of watching a magnificent film like "Lu Cha" due to ignorance or cultural narrow-mindedness. It's certainly no help to have a bunch of no-talent corporate suits in Hollywood consistently shoving advertisements for their endless stream of crappy little titles down my throat on a daily basis in an attempt to sell their garbage through media bombardment. I feel incredibly lucky that I decided to start watching romance films outside of America. No looking back now, I can tell you that much.In conclusion, "Lu Cha" is a perfect romance film. It's current IMDb rating of 6.9 is way too low. This sucker should be at 8.0 or above. It's incredibly rare that a film can captivate me for every single second of its running time. This is one of them.

The first movie I watched starring enigmatic Chinese actor Jiang Wen was during a business trip to KL, catching a show at KLCC before my late afternoon flight. In Warriors of Heaven and Earth, he donned a moustache and beard as the charismatic leader Lieutenant Li, in a movie which had great premise but a lousy story to tell. As for Zhao Wei, unless your head was buried in sand, you wouldn't have missed the era in the late 90s where she was bombarding television sets everywhere in her role as Little Sparrow in My Fair Princess Huan Zhu Ge Ge.So I guess putting them together in a movie made it almost irresistible to not want to pick up this DVD. This was actually a precursor to their Warriors movie where they collaborated again, but in this modern setting, based upon a short story "Adiliya by the River" (what the heck is Adiliya?) by Jin Renshun, they star as a pair of wannabe lovers looking into exploring if they could be together.Sweeping aside the age gap, this movie is one heck of a mindgame. It's frustrating at times as nothing actually happens, and the lead characters just sit around and talk about stuff absolutely not related to anything at all. Well, at least not directly related to what's happening on hand, but telling stories - we're sitting through a story with characters telling stories, fictional ones which doesn't really add depth to plot, or characterization. It's pretty strange stuff.And strange are their characters too, with the only realistic moment is the beginning - if you're looking for a stranger in a cafe, and there are two ladies, who would you approach first, the hot one, or the plain looking one? Chen Mingliang (Jiang Wen) went for the jugular, but it was actually Wu Fang (Zhao Wei) who was his blind date. They don't start off well, and continued to bicker. One's become obsessive with her conservatism, while the latter is a serial blind-dater.But there is more than meets the eye to Wu Fang, and herein lies the guesswork to decipher who she actually was, and the motivations behind what she is doing. You can boil it down to PMS, or to the wall being built around her heart, or to just plain old psychosis. Whatever the case is, it's about persistence and the relentless pursuit of who you like, and on the other side, to spice things up with playing coy, hard to get, and being more of a mysterious enigma.Nothing much to take away in less than 90 minutes, except to admire the two lead's ability to act and play off each other, and Christopher Doyle's cinematography (he makes tea leaves in hot water so sexy), which is a bit of a waste in a movie lacking in strength of story. I hate to say this, but the repetitive score is a bit irritating.Code 9 DVD contains zero extras. The sound was quite bad, with plenty of echo, like speaking in a vast enclosed space. The transfer was bearably decent, but the subtitles seemed to look as if it has its bottom thinly shaved off.

Saw this for Vicki Zhao and her performance is worth a watch, but the movie itself is disappointing.Vicki plays Fang, a graduate student who goes on lots of blind dates. The film opens on one of these with a guy named Chen. Chen is clearly disappointed at the sight of Fang, seeing her as reserved, inexperienced, and unlikely to put out, and he doesn't try to hide it. His patronizing, loutish behavior quickly causes Fang to walk out on him. Chen chases after her and crudely propositions her as a parting shot. She slaps him and leaves but he's waiting for her at her school the next day in stalker-like fashion. He apologizes but, in the course of their conversation, freely volunteers the fact that he hit his previous girlfriend upon discovering her infidelity--albeit, he says, with a slap like the one Fang delivered to him. Though Fang is repulsed and starts to walk away from him again, she doesn't seem sufficiently afraid of him and even consents to his accompanying her on her next blind date with someone else--for her protection, he says! We begin to suspect there's something very wrong with Fang as well, as she tells a series of increasingly disturbing stories of a "friend's" childhood. Fang says her friend describes her as too conservative, but she's not merely emotionally detached--she can be eerily dissociative, seeming mainly interested in telling stories, and turns cold or angry when the conversation takes a turn into subjects she's not comfortable with. Chen quickly picks up on this and offers to listen to her stories in order to maintain contact with her. As the storytelling goes on, the cinematography becomes distractingly strange and erratic, jumping between different times and places, and at times it even appears Fang is talking to herself. We're left to guess if these stories are real or not, and whether Fang is drawing him into something sinister.This escalates when Chen decides to pursue another woman, Lang, at the same time. Lang is an outgoing, sexily dressed piano player pursued by many men that for some reason a friend of Chen seems to think is a sure thing for Chen. But when Chen goes to make his move and gets a clear look at her face, he sees that she looks exactly like Fang but shows no sign of recognizing him. After hearing Fang talk so much about the traumatic childhood of her "friend," this is chilling, and you immediately wonder if she has multiple personality disorder. This is solidified when Lang denies being Fang, seems to have a very different personality, and claims to know no one named Fang. Chen's initial reaction is anger and humiliation and wanting to know what kind of game Fang is playing, but in the face of Lang's repeated and convincing denials, he seems as inappropriately undisturbed by Lang as Fang was by him. He continues pursuing both Fang and Lang and doesn't do a lot of speculating, so we're left to do it ourselves. Is Chen of sound mind? Could Fang have a twin? Or if she has multiple personalities, are there others, and what might they be capable of? A more innocuous explanation might be that Fang earns money for school at night playing the role of Lang, entertainer of men, and her patrons knowing she was a graduate student would make her less desirable. But the fact that Fang as Lang never admits this to Chen and so convincingly and effortlessly deceives him about not being Fang as he recounts their past conversations and reveals his feelings for Fang, makes this possibility disturbing as well. You really have to wonder about Chen. He doesn't follow Fang or Lang to see if they live in the same place or try to meet anyone they know except the "friend" of Fang's stories. Is he thinking he can help a fragile Fang/Lang integrate different parts of herself or is he taking advantage of a mentally ill person, playing one personality off against the other? Surely he isn't oblivious to the fact that, if Lang is merely a role Fang plays, Fang wouldn't believe his interest in her could be genuine if he continued to see Lang and hid it from her? Chen reveals early on that his ex, besides being a cheater, was also a compulsive liar. Chen's great interest in Fang's story of her "friend's" traumatic childhood seems like it could be compassionate and an attempt to get her to open up, but as he continues to seem unfazed by its growing horror and the chilling way Fang strings him along, you begin to wonder. Fang claims at times to be making her stories up, but continues as if they're real. Is she just breaking the tension? What else could Fang be lying about and does she herself even know what's real and what isn't? Is there something similarly disturbing in Chen's past that attracts him to all this?There are some touching moments in this film, but they're held back by all these undertones that can feel manipulative and keep you at a distance, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was left with a dissatisfied feeling at the end, like I'd been jerked around for little purpose.

Though this film lacks a conventional plot, if you analyze the filmyou will see a developing theme. Like other 6th generation Chinese films, the film puts an emphasis on urban china. One character, Wu Fang, always orders green tea whenever she dates. At each date she never tells stories of her own life, but only of her friend and her friend's puzzling family life. This shows her desire to keep her identity a secret, but the viewer must believe that these could be stories about her own dysfunctional family. The other character, Lang Lang has the same face as Wu Fang, but a strikingly different personality. Lang is never conservative, and only appears at night. When we see Fang, we always see her during the day. The man is puzzled and intrigued by both women, one a night-life girl and the graduate student. His pursuit of both women portray's man's classic fight to encompass both a party girl and a smart, intelligent woman. Though the movie ends suddenly, viewers will find that it has a shocking revelation at the end, one that keeps you talking after the film ends.