Stometer
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
Onlinewsma
Absolutely Brilliant!
Livestonth
I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible
Hunky Stud
This is a story about Shanghai, however, most of actors were from Hong Kong. And the director is also from Hong Kong, if I am not mistaken. So it certainly lacks the particular shanghai style.The best part about this film was its furniture, settings, room decorations, music, hair styles, costumes, etc. Those all feel authentic, correlate well to the certain period of that time.It is understandable that it is a hard to consolidate a person's entire life into a short film. However, it jumps from one period to another without any explanations. If a person knows nothing about the modern Chinese history, s/he will not be able to understand most of it. Some of the scenes were also confusing. For example, why did the protagonist's lover had to run away suddenly, etc? Hopefully, maybe one day, some real Shanghai director will hire some real Shanghai actors to redo this film again with the real shanghai dialect.
yo_sammi-1
I watched this movie on DVD and focus more on the acting, the background, the directing, the music instead of on the plot.I must admit, the more you watched this movie, the more you will appreciate it. The editing certainly did not help this movie at the theaters. The movie was so fast moving that one may be lost among the various romantic stories of the leading lady Quiyao.But, I listened to the director's comments and found out more about the movie than anything. We all certainly think that we are expert in analyzing a movie, however, why don't we all find out why the scenes were edited in that way, or why the actors handled the role in such way. Yes, once you open your mind, you will accept more of how artsy this film is. This movie certainly provoked a lot of thinking.
voyager_ix
Although it certainly won't be everybody's cup of tea, "Everlasting Regret" is a fine example of a movie which reveals more by what it _doesn't_ show than by what it actually presents on-screen. Stanley Kwan undertakes the difficult task of telling the history of a city (Shanghai, roughly from the 1940s to the 1980s) through the personal histories of a few of its citizens -- without hardly ever showing a shot of the city itself. Indeed, music, clothes and hairstyles are nearly all we get in view of clues as to the passage of time, and some key events -- whether personal or political -- are barely even commented upon, much less shown directly. This admittedly makes the film somewhat difficult to follow (and presupposes at least a basic knowledge of recent Chinese history), but at the same time it manages to make the experience much more emotional and, well, _personal_ than a 'standard' historical piece would ever achieve. Instead of staging elaborate historical events and recreating architecture, Kwan masterfully focuses on the personal details and the effects these historical events (together with the passage of time itself) have had on the characters' lives. To see (or better yet: to feel) these effects, you need to concentrate on the details: the clothes, the furniture, the design of cups and glasses, the looks exchanged and the gazes averted. The details are supposedly where the devil is -- but it's also where the beauty of this film lies. For those of you who like to play the comparison game: "Everlasting Regret" is like a tranquilized Wong Kar Wai with a political background, or an emotional, de-contextualized Hou Hsiao-hsien. Be that as it may, if you're interested in 'serious' Asian cinema, you certainly won't feel any regrets about giving this one a chance.
danielgelsi-1
Just saw the movie at the Venice Film Festival and it was mediocre. My review is somewhat biased because the movie is most likely geared towards the Chinese market and my cultural knowledge of China is very limited hence I may have failed to culturally relate to the film. However, the film felt episodic, in a bad sense, and, probably for budgetary reasons, the action was as if in a vacuum in the sense that the characters were certainly impacted by the events surrounding them, the rise of communism and détente, or whatever you may call it. But, we never experience, either through documentary footage or through outside shots, what China was going through at the time. Thus, it's hard to place the characters in the history that surrounds them. In this sense, the movie felt like a play. The acting was decent, nevertheless the lead actress was only passable. After being saturated by the main characters, I felt almost coerced into feeling invested in their lives and thus was curious to see the ending. However, the ending failed to make for the remainder of the film.
