She Remembers He Forgets (2015) NYAFF 2016

Earnest,perhaps a bit too earnest romance looks at the disappointments in life and the roads not taken.

Married couple Gigi and Shing-Wah attend their high school reunion and find that they had hoped that things would have been better for them. Gigi is also left wondering if things wouldn't have been better had she gone off with Bok-man who as once a friend to them both and part of a romantic triangle.

Flashing between the present and the past SHE REMEMBERS, HE FORGETS works hard at trying to be more than just a weepy romance. Pushing to really examine the threads between what we hoped to do and love when we were kids/young adults versus what middle age brings the film has a great deal going on. This is not a simple boys meet girl, girl must choose one story, but something else that forces the audience to examine what might have been if only...

And that is the problem with the film, the ever present hand of the writer director, which is adding layers and twists that make the film in many ways more real, but ends up being too much for the film to handle. By constantly flashing back and forth too many plot lines are generated, while it adds to the sense of real life, things end up either unresolved or rushed to a conclusion. While we do get everything we need for the central story the mosaic around it is found to be less finely crafted. For better or worse the film is a romance and despite the layers its pretty clear how most of this is is going to go regardless of what director Adam Wong tries to do or how he tries to make us think otherwise.

This by no means a bad film, its just a film that is trying way too hard to win us over and while I can admire its gumption at striving to do more and be the best, I still have to say that while I'm giving bonus points for the attempt, I have to take a few others away for not quite being wholly satisfying. The best way to describe it as its a film from the first frame you know you're going to love but by the end you simply like it and you end up wondering how did that happen.

Worth a look for the attempt if nothing else.

For tickets and more information go here.