Full of likeable performances and marbled with moments of charming whimsy, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? is less richly plotted than American-Chinese writer-director Arvin Chen’s impressive first feature, Au revoir Taipei, but still equally easy to digest. Unlike his all-through-the-night previous film, Tomorrow is a more straightforward rom-com, interweaving three emotional pairings that span a broad sexual range. Taipei-metrosexual to its fingertips, it’s sure to be dubbed a “gay movie” (especially in the West) but is really nothing of the kind – and may even get a pasting from card-carrying gay viewers for its portrayal of homosexuality as maybe just a passing phase. In fact, it’s a cute, rather sweet movie about romantic confusion, professing no deep analysis of sexuality, that’s headlined by a major star (Taiwan singer-actor Richie Ren) and aimed at mainstream audiences. Local publicity for the film has gone out of its way to disguise the gay elements, with no hint in the poster or trailer.
Playing up his tendency to look ingenuously out-of-it, Ren is well cast as Wei-chung, a quiet, middle-aged optician who’s happily married and has a young son. At a pre-wedding banquet for his younger sister, Wei-chung bumps into an old friend, the screamingly camp Stephen, who’s surprised at Wei-chung’s situation. “Don’t worry, I won’t blow your cover,” he says. “What cover?” says Wei-chung. “I’m married.” Soon, however, Wei-chung is staring into the eyes of a handsome Hong Kong customer and getting romantic stirrings. Parallel to this, and getting an almost equal amount of screen time, is the story of Wei-chung’s spacey sister (nicely played by TV actress Kimi Hsia), who gets a bad attack of pre-wedding nerves, dumps her dopey fiancé, and holes up in her flat with pot noodles and a South Korean TV drama. As both brother and sister try to sort out their emotional chaos, their respective partners also end up equally confused as to what the hell is going on.
Tomorrow has none of Au revoir’s dense, criss-crossing structure but it’s still an ambitious undertaking on a more emotional level. Though there are many fine moments, Chen’s script and direction don’t quite manage to sustain either an even rom-com tone as the film bounces between the various strands or a thorough-going feeling of irreality that would make the occasional slides into fantasy seem smoother. It’s the kind of script that looks like it needed one more polish; as it is, a fuller and more descriptive score by Hsu Wen, an American-Chinese jazz composer who did Au revoir, would have helped to create an overall mood. It’s individual touches rather than the film as a whole that one comes away remembering: Wei-chung’s boss (industry veteran Hsiao Yeh in a cameo) floating away into retirement, the sister’s duncy fiancé staging an elaborate reconciliation, the sister herself talking to her soap pin-up, or Wei-chung’s wife launching into the title song.
However, it’s a tribute to the performances that the movie does pack a final punch, with Wei-chung’s touching speech and the nicely open ending. Though her character is a little underwritten, Mavis Fan shows a quiet abstraction that fits well with Ren’s child-like emotional innocence, and the Taiwanese singer-actress comes through strongly in the final scenes, which justify her playing a character who’s slightly older than she actually is. As equally cast against type as Ren is Stone (aka Shih Chin-hang), lead guitarist of Taiwan rock band Mayday, who is a major surprise as the sister’s good-hearted but bemused fiancé. The rest of the cast is scattered with actors from Au revoir, including Jack Yao as a wedding MC and Lawrence Ko as the leader of the film’s campy “chorus”.
Derek Elley