Perhaps Love
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Perhaps Love is also a song performed jointly by John Denver and Placio Domingo.
Perhaps Love (Chinese: 如果·愛; pinyin: Rúguǒ. Ài) is a 2005 film directed by Peter Chan, written by Oi Wah Lam and Raymond To, and choreographed by Farah Khan.
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[edit] Cast
[edit] Business
The film reportedly cost US$10 million, and it earned US$2.2 million in its opening weekend.
[edit] Trivia
It closed the Venice Film Festival. Ji Jin Hee's role was originally offered to Andy Lau. The film is the first musical to be produced in mainland China in over forty years. The film was submitted by Hong Kong as its official entry for the 2006 Academy Awards. The choreographer for the film, Farah Khan, also choreographed Paheli, which was India's entry for the 2006 Academy Awards. Perhaps Love was filmed in Beijing and Shanghai.
[edit] Awards
The film's female lead Zhou Xun won the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award in the Best Actress category. The film was also nominated for eleven Hong Kong Film Awards. It lost the awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Peter Chan), Best Film Editing (Wenders Li and Chi-Leung Kwong), Best Screenplay (Oi Wah Lam and Raymond To), and Best Sound Design (Kinson Tsang). It won awards for Best Actress (Zhou Xun), Best Art Direction (Chung Man Yee and Pater Wong), Best Cinematography (Peter Pau and Christopher Doyle), Best Costume & Make Up Design (Chung Man Yee and Dora Ng), Best Original Film Score (Peter Kam and Leon Ko), and Best Original Film Song for "Perhaps Love" (this award was shared by composer Peter Kam, lyricist Him Yiu, and Jacky Cheung, who performed the song in the film).
Though Christopher Doyle worked on the cinematography for the film along with Oscar-winner Peter Pau (who won for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), it's unclear whether he actually shared the Hong Kong Film Award with Peter Pau or not. Christopher Doyle has, however, won (by himself) the Best Cinematography award from the Hong Kong Film Awards for 2046, Hero, Fallen Angels, Ashes of Time, Days of Being Wild, and Soul. He's also been nominated for the Best Cinematography award for the feature films Her Beautiful Life Lies and Happy Together and the short films Dumplings and Going Home. (Going Home, from the sequel to Three... Extremes, was incidentally directed by Peter Chan.) He also shared a nomination for the award with Wai Keung Lau for Chungking Express.
[edit] Comparisons
The film is often compared to Moulin Rouge, as it prominently features the device of a story within a story, which depicts a real-life love triangle between the actors themselves. It is also a musical, although unlike Moulin Rouge the musical numbers are limited to the inner show.
In an interview with the Malaysian newspaper The Star, director Peter Chan stressed that "Perhaps Love is a love story, not a musical. It’s not even being promoted as a musical. It's not a musical in the conventional sense. My characters don’t break out into song. Initially, it was a challenge to balance the over-the-top element in musicals and the subtleties of a movie. In the end, the method I used to overcome that was to make a movie-within-a-movie." The interview appeared in the November 25, 2005 edition of The Star, as Peter Chan was in Kuala Lumpur to promote his film.
The film has also drawn comparisons to Bollywood, the Indian film industry famous for its musical films. The Hollywood Reporter described Perhaps Love as "Bollywood meets Bob Fosse." Bollywood director and choreographer Farah Khan choreographed the film, which featured nine Indian dancers who appeared in several musical numbers. The double-disc Region 3 editions of the film also contained a feature on the film's Bollywood dancers on the second disc.
[edit] Video and soundtrack releases
The soundtrack was released in two versions: a single-disc version in a jewel case and a limited-edition, double-disc, boxed set version. The double-disc version was marketed as a "Special Deluxe Edition" and included a bright red slipcase (embossed to look like leather) with gold lettering. The slipcase was seven and three-fourths inches tall, one and three-fourths inches deep, and five and three-fourts inches wide. It included a twenty-eight page hardcover book, printed on thick paper, which included a synopsis of the film and brief biographies of its stars in both Chinese and English. The book also included eighteen color photographs. The soundtrack was presented in a folding case with the music on a compact disc and a "making of" movie on a DVD disc. The folding case also included five postcards (including one for each of the film's four major stars) and a poster. The "Special Deluxe Edition" retailed for around US$25.
The DVD of the film was released in four different Region 3 DVD editions, including three versions released in Hong Kong and China: a single-disc edition, a double-disc "Special Edition," and a double-disc "Golden Limited Edition." A single-disc edition was also released in Korea and had Korean subtitles.
The "Special Edition" included a gold-colored cardboard slipcase and a digipak with two DVD discs. The first disc, in DVD-9 format, contained the film with optional subtitles in English, traditional Chinese, or simplified Chinese. The second disc, in DVD-5 format, contained sixty minutes of bonus material, including a "making of" feature, a b-roll, additional information on the cast, an extended credit list, and a feature on the film's Bollywood dancers, as well as other clips. This set retailed for US$18.
The "Golden Limited Edition" was limited to only 4,000 copies and was essentially the same as the "Special Edition," except that it also included a hardcover book of nearly two dozen pages with a gold-colored cover. It retailed for around US$40.
The film was also released on VCD in a three-disc set that retailed for around US$9.
Pirated DVDs of the film also appeared within days of the film being released in theaters, and were available for purchase for US$2-US$3.
