The Equation of Love & Death

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Movie: The Equation of Love & Death
Chinese: 李米的猜想 (Li mi de cai xiang)
Director: Cao Baoping
Writer: Cao Baoping
Producer: Siu Ming Tsui, Zhongjun Wang, Kuo-fu Chen
Cinematographer:
Release Date: September 18, 2008
Runtime: 96 min
Language: Mandarin
Country: China

Plot

Limi is a cab driver who has been trying to find her fiancé, Fang Wen, since he disappeared when her parents broke off their pending marriage. Qiu Shuitian is a small-time crook from the countryside who comes to the big city with hopes of getting his hands on some booty to take home with him and finding his true love. Lastly, Feifei is a recovering drug addict who has found support in her lover and business partner, Ma Bing. A mysterious death and its subsequent investigation suddenly intertwine the lives of these characters, gradually revealing the bizarre connection between them.

Cast

Zhou Xun - Li Mi
Chao Deng - Fang Wen / Ma Bing
Zhang Hanyu
Wang Baoqiang - Shui-Tian
Yanhui Wang
Ning Wang - FeiFei
Ni Dahong - gas station attendant
Cao Baoping

Trailers

Film Festivals

2009 (11th) Udine Far East Film - April 24th-May 2nd (Italian Premiere)
2009 (8th) New York Asian Film Festival - June 19th-July 5th
2009 (13th) Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival - July 16th-26th - Off the Fantastic (Korean Premiere)

Awards

2009 (3rd) Asian Film Awards - March 23rd - Best Actress Zhou Xun

Comments

Ki May 15 2009 10:45 pm It’s always a blast walking into a movie without knowing anything about the film and then finding yourself completely immersed in an unpredictable story. “The Equation of Love & Death” delivers this type of experience and props should go out to first time director Baoping Cao for making such a unique film. The film like its main protagonist, is a jittery mystery seeking out lost love, but entangled with shady criminal elements.

In “The Equation of Love & Death,” Li Mi (Xun Zhou) is a chain smoking cab driver who has been searching for her boyfriend for the past four years. Her boyfriend Fang Wen (Chao Deng) vanished out of the blue, but has continued to write her letters without revealing his whereabouts.

One day, Li Mi picks up two passengers who seem new to the city. When they are ready to pay for their cab fare, Li Mi is unable to change their large bills and asks the passengers to wait while she runs off to find change. The impatient passengers eventually walk out of the cab, snatching a magazine with pictures of her missing boyfriend as payment for their change, and go off to find a person with sunglasses. When they find the man sitting alongside an overpass bridge, the man plunges to his death in an apparent suicide.

Meanwhile, the man that fell off the bridge lands on another passing taxi cab. The person driving the cab is Ma Bing and his girlfriend FeiFei. When Ma Bing runs out to check on the fallen man he notices a magazine that has also fallen from the bridge above. The pictures in the magazine are of himself …

The movie, set around the the theme of random chance & its continuous use of chance meetings to the story together, may lead certain viewers to roll their eyes in disbelief, but for myself, these fortuitous events worked in the context of the film. If you buy into the story, the random chance encounters found in the movie seem nor more implausible than what you find in your local newspapers.

Xun Zhou is obviously a beautiful woman and in “The Equation of Love & Death” the filmmakers attempt to tone down her appearance to fit the character of a nervous cab driver. The use of little to no make-up and close-ups revealing her freckles seemed to work in inverse and made your natural beauty even more prominent. This wasn’t a bad thing, especially when taken with her on-the-money performance. Able to command a broad range of emotions (the best scene involved expressions after having her hand slammed in a car door), gave as good as any performance I have seen from a Chinese film this year. Xun Zhou is also flanked by top notch performers (Chao Deng & Hanyu Zhang), both of whom appeared in “Assembly.”

Having watched a slew of underwhelming films from China in the past year, it’s nice to come across an unexpected gem. “The Equation of Love & Death” keeps an air of mystery while revealing a chain of events that will have you thinking “time flies when you’re having fun” when its all said and done. “The Equation of Love & Death” also shows Xun Zhou as one of the best actresses working in Asia today (sign me up for membership in her fan club). Fans of Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s “6ixtynin9″ (Ruang talok 69) should in particular check this out.

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