Just One Look (Hong Kong, 2002)
Directed by: Riley Ip

Starring: Shawn Yu, Wong You-nam, Charlene Choi & Gillian Chung (The Twins!), Anthony Wong, Sam Lee, Eric Kot


If JUST ONE LOOK was an American movie here¹s what would be different. It would have been hailed in the US as a gently bittersweet film about growing up. Its rapturous worship of old Chinese movies would have earned it comparisons to Cinema Paradiso. The star performances of Cantopop idols, The Twins, would have been lauded as stunning proof that the bubblegum duo could act. Anthony Wong¹s performance as a two-bit gangster would have been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Award, and he would have won. JUST ONE LOOK would have toured independent theaters and run forever. But it¹s Chinese, so none of this happened.



Set on sleepy Cheung Chau Island in the 70¹s, this flick oozes nostalgia for a time when every question had an answer, and every guy wanted to be Bruce Lee. Fan (Shawn Yu) sells sugar cane outside the island¹s movie theater, clinging to the belief that local gangster, Crazy (Anthony Wong), killed his dad years ago. He and his pal, Fishball (Wong You-nam) fall in love with the local kung fu coach¹s daughter (Charlene Choi) and an orphan living in the nearby Buddhist nunnery (Gillian Chung). 



Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi are, of course, super-celebrity pop duo, The Twins, and Shawn Yu is a pop star in his own right. But American pop stars have never made an equivocal, bittersweet movie like this before. Nothing works out the way it should in this film, and Fan and Fishball have the lesson rapped into their skulls that it¹s time to let go of childhood certainties and say hello to a world with no black and white, and where everyone hurts. But there¹s something to hold onto, even here: the movies.

Loaded with footage from classic Chinese cinema of the ‘60s and ‘70s, sprinkled with film-fueled fantasies, and carrying an illegally catchy version of the BeeGee¹s “Melody Fair” sung by the Twins, JUST ONE LOOK is awash in the best kind of nostalgia there is: the nostalgia for a brighter, sunnier world that never really existed, except onscreen.



Don¹t miss out on an understated, undiscovered classic. Two screenings only — and it¹ll never come this way again.



NOTE: Who are the Twins? Not twins, not even sisters, these Canto-pop idols came from nowhere three years ago, released five platinum-selling albums and now have their faces on everything from soft toys to condom ads (“Are you man enough to do it twice?”). Science has shown that when an average Hong Konger inhales they are taking in 30% oxygen, 15% nitrogen, and 55% Twins merchandise.