The New York Asian Film Festival ran from June 30 to July 16. For more information about what you missed, click here.
It doesn’t come as even a little bit of a surprise to find out that Derek Tsang’s Soul Mate was nominated for pretty much every film award in Asia, and in the case of Taipei’s Golden Horse awards, wound up being the first movie to earn a split Best Actress win for both its leads. It feels very much like the sort of thing that, were it an American film, would be considered well executed awards bait.
So in that sense, Soul Mate reveals itself to be melodrama of the highest order.
But as melodrama goes, it works pretty damn well.
A chance encounter between Ansheng (Zhou Dongyu) and old friend Jiaming (Toby Lee) leads to the revelation that their mutual friend Qiyue (Sandra Ma) has written a serial novel that details the story of their since-collapsed friendship. And the rest of the film is devoted to that trip down memory lane, as we trace the deep, complicated history that unfolded between Ansheng, Qiyue, and Jiaming, and find out what led to the end of their friendship and what happened after.
Which is the thing that is captured so well in the beginning of the film: the friendship between Qiyue and Ansheng feels real from the very start (a meet cute involving a chipmunk). Recognizing one another as the other half that completes them, their friendship becomes very intimate very quickly, best illustrated in the scene early on where they bathe together, analyzing each others bodies and bonding over the difficulties of navigating puberty.
It should be noted that the accomplishment of the actors playing the younger Qiyue and Ansheng can’t be understated: if these two can’t sell their connection from the very start, then the whole rest of the movie is fatally weakened. It’s a big ask of any child actor, and they deserve a lot of credit for coming through with flying colors. They instantly make the friendship feels real and universal, which serves to makes every joyful moment that follows all the more foreboding, since we know it’s destined to go wrong.
Being the product of a broken home, Ansheng spends pretty much all of her time at Qiyue’s house and quickly becomes a part of Qiyue’s family. They grow up together, navigating the world as an inseparable pair. Even the fact that Qiyue’s relentlessly pessimistic mom clearly prefers Ansheng to her birth daughter isn’t enough to drive a stake through their seemingly eternal bond.
And in the grand tradition of such things, the only thing that can come between them is a wet dishrag of a man.
Granted, that’s probably slightly unfair to Jiaming; as the male center of this love triangle, Lee is fairly easy on the eyes and gives a perfectly good performance as a wholly dutiful, generally pleasant fellow. But every time one of these dynamic, messy fully human women has to agonize over their possible betrayal of one another all over this guy, it’s… a little hard to swallow.
Happily, the movie knows where its focus should rightly be; overall, Jiaming takes a well-deserved backseat as to better focus on the friendship and interior lives of our heroines. Ansheng leaves the small town where they grew up to travel the world, but as far as she goes, she can never quite bring herself to let go of Qiyue, and vice versa.
The so-called ‘Women’s Picture’ gets a bad rap, but when it’s shot and performed well, as Soul Mate certainly is, whatever else its flaws it at the very least provides a beautiful platform for its actresses to really show off what they can do.
Ma gets the more show-y showcase as the flighty Ansheng, who plays both the peripatetic bohemian cool and the barely concealed loneliness and vulnerability beneath the surface.
And Zhou Dongyu, so winning and hilarious as the romantic lead in This Is Not What I Expected (reviewed here), shows the depth of her range as she sketches a portrait of a woman utterly terrified of life and quietly resentful that the only person who truly understands her also outshines her in every way.
Watching Dongyu and Ma together, and how expertly they calibrate their performances to the point where they seem to be playing off one another even though they’re so far apart for large chunks of the film, is essentially the sole reason to watch. Its romance and its plot mechanics are, at core, nothing that hasn’t been seen before. There is an attempt at some meta-narrative involving the serialized novel that acts as the frame for our story, a larger commentary on the nature of truth and how it can be reshaped to serve a purpose. But ultimately, all that plays out like a kind of twist that community college creative writing class short stories thrive on. It’s a last attempt to draw tears out of the viewer, and your mileage will vary as to how well it pulls it all off.
As a story, Soul Mate is only okay. As melodrama, it’s effective, but it’s still going to be an acquired taste. Which is pretty much how melodrama works anyway. But as a pure illustration of what Zhou Dongyu and Sandra Ma can do, it’s a most impressive achievement indeed.
