Love Is the Only Answer

Patrick Kong is clearly a director with one theme, one message and one aim, to strike a chord with the Hong Kong audience, telling you again and again that – love clearly sucks. In fact there are no redeeming factors. In his latest episode, Love is the Only Answer, Kong improves in his delivery and the result is giving out the cynically true message about modern day romance in a manner that does not annoy the audience. Perhaps, Kong has taken a leaf out of Pang Ho Cheung's book of filmmaking, because this film is clearly shorter, dialogues are less self-indulgent and the film actually breezes by in an efficient manner. Points must be given to the ever reliable former TVB's Charmaine Sheh, despite not possessing any good looks; she has presence, easily likable, identifiable and easily a good enough actress. However the pairing of Alex Fong and Charmaine is far from convincing, with the later clearly looking more like an older sibling than a couple. Despite the cheap production sets and values, Kong manages to finally tell the audience something he always wanted to express – nice guys never win, girls love jerks, girls love a challenge and stop being a nice guy. However, it took him a good 10 films before he can just splat it out. If this was Kong's first film, then it would be an accomplishment, but instead it took Kong 6 years to work it out. All in all, there is really no point in saying whether Kong's films are good or plain bad, as there is a recurring market out there that needs these kind of fix. Love sucks and probably does, but next time one will just hope that Kong doesn't use another 10 films just to get to the point…

Neo rates it 6.5/10

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