1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 76: Comrades: Almost a love story

Compare this Hong Kong rom-com to Nora Ephron’s crowd-pleasers (When Harry Met Sally; Sleepless in Seattle; You’ve Got Mail).

Similarities:

• The lovers “meet cute”
• It takes years for them to end up together
• They’re played by big stars
• Maggie Cheung (compare: Meg Ryan)
• Leon Lai (compare: “rom-com” Tom Hanks, with a little of Forrest Gump stirred in)

Differences:

• The lovers are poor immigrants
• They don’t live in apartments that only millionaires could afford
• They don’t have respectable upper-middle-class jobs (a sample of Ephron-movie jobs: architect, journalist, CEO)

The man works for years to rise to the position of sous chef in a modest restaurant.

The woman, even more driven, holds an endless succession of jobs (hustles, really), several at a time:

• McDonald’s cashiering
• For-profit language school recruiting
• Stock trading
• Bootleg music vending
• Tour guiding
• Massaging
• Being “kept” by a gangster

But this isn’t a sordid movie, at least not tonally; it really does feel like something by Ephron.

The lovers pursue and retreat from each other, stringing the audience along. There are good arguments for their coming together, and for their remaining apart. What will the lovers choose? Or will fate choose for them?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

They become friends because they’re lonely. Both have moved to Hong Kong from the mainland. One of them knows that the other is an immigrant; the other does not. The truth is revealed only gradually.

It won’t be these characters’ last move. The story takes them from China to Hong Kong to New York: least free, freer, freest.

Hong Kong, it seems, is the intermediate stage in a “natural” progression from China to the United States, whether or not the mainlanders who stop over in Hong Kong admit it. Their behavior in Hong Kong points to it. They take English classes. They eat U.S. food and watch U.S. movies. Mickey Mouse is a recurring image. One older Chinese immigrant, who has spent her life running a brothel of Thai immigrants, is obsessed with the actor William Holden.

On the other hand, the immigrants regard the mainland as shameful. They hush up their origins. If they cling to certain relics of the past, they keep them secret.

A pop star, Teresa Teng, dominates the soundtrack. Mainlanders in Hong Kong revere but won’t openly listen to her, lest they be detected as not native to Hong Kong.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The character who bucks the trend is Pau, a good-natured gangster played by Eric Tsang (who reminds one of Peter Lorre).

The woman involves herself with Pau during a difficult time. Pau isn’t stupid. He notices the lovers’ feelings for each other. Ruthless in business dealings, he’s surprisingly tolerant of his “kept” woman’s longings. Perhaps he can afford to put up with her equivocal feelings because, paradoxically, he isn’t a striver. He may pursue money, but he’s outside the usual hierarchy of advancement. He’ll always be riffraff; he knows what he is; he is contented.

He, too, moves to New York, and observes wryly that the rough-and-tumble neighborhood where he has ended up isn’t very different from where he began.

Meanwhile, the lovers are kept at arm’s length from each other by their mainstream notions of success.

This is my favorite image: Cheung on the left, Tsang on the right, Lai and his mainland bride in the middle. Four characters, three couples. The dream, on both continents, is for romantic and material success to issue predictably from hard work and prudent choice. But success is more capricious. The route is tortuous and unclear; at some junctures, travelers must be downright lucky.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 38: That thing you do!

They should have known it was a bad idea to call their band the One-ders.

Their fans mispronounce this name (it’s supposed to sound like “the Wonders”).

The name evokes the phrase “One-Hit Wonder,” which describes what their band is in danger of becoming. They start out with one song, “That Thing You Do!” It gets so big, so suddenly, that they spend too much time playing it in dancehalls, at state fairs, and on TV, and they neglect to practice other songs.

Meanwhile, the rot is setting in:

The lead singer is too moody.

His girlfriend hangs around the band too much.

The guitarist is an idiot.

The bassist is obsessed with joining the Marines.

The drummer breaks his arm.

The drummer who replaces him – well, he can really play, he’s no idiot, he has genuine star quality, but he’s not truly one of the group. He filled in one night and somehow became the catalyst for the band’s success.

So much for the plot. The movie is basically an excuse to showcase “vintage” look and sound. The year is 1964; the setting is Erie, Pennsylvania – and then, other Midwestern cities (and fairgrounds) – and then, Hollywood.

There are lots of old cars and appliances to look at. Indeed, the replacement drummer is recruited away from a job in his dad’s appliance store. We stare at blenders, TVs, clock radios, etc.

Only the fairgrounds, with their mud and their gigantic bleachers and grandstands, look the same in 1964 as they do today.

The band is full of young men, so the lead singer’s girlfriend – Liv Tyler (who, in real life, is musical; whose father is Steven Tyler; whose adoptive father is Todd Rundgren) – commands a lot of attention, though in this story she contributes nothing to the music.

The replacement drummer’s girlfriend (Charlize Theron) provides deadpan hilarity in early scenes. She sits in her bedroom, rollers in her big hair, exasperation (or is it sheer boredom?) on her face, as the replacement drummer phones in his plans to tour with the band. She quietly leaves him for her dentist and is not heard from again.

We do hear from the original drummer (Giovanni Ribisi) – the one who has broken his arm. He takes the replacement drummer’s old job at the appliance store. Periodically, the movie cuts to scenes of the replacement drummer’s family, into which the original drummer has inserted himself, eating TV dinners with them and perhaps making overtures to the replacement drummer’s sister. All the while, a bulky cast remains on his arm.

It’s odd how casual this is, but then I wonder if this is the point of this breezy movie – if, indeed, the movie is trying to make a point. In this society, everything, everyone, is replaceable. A concert tour is abandoned for another as soon as money dictates it. Outfits are swapped out (the band is always being coaxed into appearing in a different suit color). Girlfriends and boyfriends are upgraded. And band members. There is some initial fuss about this, but soon everyone is going along with it. The people who are being traded “down” don’t complain much, either. The band’s ruthless manager – played by Tom Hanks, who also wrote and directed the movie – explains that this is just how things work.

Just as new TVs and clock radios quickly lose their shine and become obsolete, it’s very common to have to settle for being a one-hit wonder.

That thing you do.

That one thing.