The Story of 90 Coins Directed by Michael Wong
The Story of 90 Coins
Director: Michael Wong
Cast: Dongjun Han, Zhuang Zhiqi, Jose Acosta
Year: 2015
Provenance: China
Review Author: Roberto Matteucci
“Don't let a promise become just a beautiful memory.”
Love has many contrasts. Literature, cinema, art, theater, sculpture narrate about the beauty of love but also the difficulties in realizing it freely and peacefully.
For Romeo and Juliet, the most famous and unfortunate fiancés, the impediment to their happiness comes from the outside. The parents do not want their engagement, and they prevent it, but also Romeo and Juliet had some mistakes.
The obstacles in love often depend on a bad choice of lovers.
Rage, jealousy, anger can destroy even the vow of eternal passion.
In the second century, the Roman writer Apuleius in the Metamorphoses wrote The fable of Eros and Psyche, a apologue of a broken love promise:
"Oh Psyche, my Psyche, are these the promises you made to me? What can your husband expect from you? " (1)
Psyche does not keep the commitment and tries to see Eros, the consequences will be terrible. However, the writer talks about the gods of Mount Olympus. They can do everything, even change the imminent catastrophe of destroyed oaths and transform it into infinite love. All the gods performed the marriage. Jupiter, Juno, Bacchus, Vulcan, Apollo, Venus celebrate the happy end.
The characters of Eros, the god of love, and the beautiful Psyche, have a link with the fairy-tale short film The Story of 90 Coins. The director is Michael Wong, from Malaysia but living in Beijing.
The oath of lovers of The Story of 90 Coins could be broken for a misunderstanding, for masochism.
Chen Wen and Wang Yu Yang's love begins with the maximum of excitement.
Wang Yu Yang wants to persuade her to love him. So, he proposes a challenge.
Wang Yu Yang will convince her within ninety days. Every 24 hours he will give her a piece of paper and a coin.
In medium shot there is the couple, they are of shoulders. In the backdrop the city of Beijing with its modernity. It is evening. The colours are dark but the light of the buildings illuminates the sequence.
The guys and Beijing are one.
Wang Yu Yang expresses his love, she turns around slowly, is astonished, soft focus on the boy because he is weak while he is declaiming his passion.
Subsequently, the shooting shows their faces, the location is the same, the buildings are behind, the camera is closer but the two lovers do not look at it. The director has another purpose, he want to describe their universality in front of the great Beijing and its skyscrapers.
A vow is not a game; it must be a tenacious declaration, determined, refined and passionate.
Wang Yu Yang is in love so the words come out of his heart sincerely. The girl loses the air of defiance and succumbs to courtship.
"Give me 90 days." Ninety days of promises. Wang Yu Yang will send her a coin every night with a small message: sentences of love or poems.
The moment of delivery is important; the director frames the passage with a close-up of the hands of lovers. In the background, there are still the lights of the city but not in focus. There are big coloured circles, they look like fireworks launched into the sky to honour of love.
The tone changes, the time has passed and the woman capitulates, but she is still insecure. She demonstrates it with the slow movements of the head, or observing the pyramid of the Louvre by the Chinese architect Ieoh Ming Pei on the computer monitor.
Chen Wen decides for cohabitation but for the marriage, she wants to wait.
With the disappeared of colours, also imagination disappears, now white dominates. It is the tone of the elegance and luxury as in the fashion company where they work. The romantic situation evaporates.
The tone is bourgeois, love dissolves in the elegant black and white, but love cannot be in black and white: "My priority was to have our own house in the city".
Then a charming French man comes, and he talks about Paris and her profession. Chen Wen's uncertainty continues. She is even more confused, she considers Wang Yu Yang's love as a weakness. The boyfriend's jealousy bursts, so, he consciously determines to leave him.
The girl has a sad gaze, looks at the rain from the restaurant. She lost her smile, and she reminds the happy age under an umbrella with him.
On the table, she has an Air France ticket, a passport and a successful career but the rain is different now.
The author's idea is that love must have a bright, vivid colour.
In her departure, Chen Wen's house is all white. When she comes in, only her dress is yellow. A carton accidentally falls to the ground. Inside there are a lots of colours. Now small papersand lively yarns are on the floor.
The flashbacks start when the box falls down. It is the revenge of love. The author shows it brevitly but with a profound observation of life. By definition, the time of love is simple, it can be are fast and leave always a mark: the boy is almost choking when he dedicates a song to her always under a storm.
Or when they laugh together, or when the girlfriend follows him with a snake found in their tent.
Love must resist in good and bad times. Chen Wen is sick, the boyfriend carries her on his shoulders. It is a painful but human sequence: Wong shoots the guy from down. He is dangling, fatigued, showing a strong pain, but not a physical one even though his girlfriend's body is swinging over his head. Then there are the chats, the games, and the rides with the motorbike in the countryside.
The editing in the last scene is matched with the tears of boyfriends.
She cries saddened while she is reading again the messages. She will never find another love so powerful. In the flashback, Wang Yu Yang cries for joy too. Chen Wen answered yes.
Love is eternal as the fable of Eros and Psyche demonstrates us. The engaged couple understands the mistakes made and accept the promise. Chen Wen calls Wang Yu Yang; the ending is similar Psyche and Eros: "From today you are husband and wife for eternity." (1)
Narrating a love story is not easy; the risk is to fall into banality.But Michael Wong avoids it with stylish images, with contemplative camera movements; the editing with black matching cut teaches us that life can have dark periods.
The voiceover belongs to the girl because she has doubt, uncertainty. She must break down her inner resistance, she must choose between love and a career as a designer in Paris.
The ending is in Chen Wen's milky flat. Everything is white, even the houses glimpsed from the large window are white. Also the sky is white. She has understood the priceless value of the boy's desire: wide shot, the girl is sitting on the floor. The video camera goes back, the scene is closing, the author does not want to disturb the moment of choice. Follows a fade and another black matching cut. The sound of a telephone, the voice of Chen Wen again. Love wins thanks to the skill of the Michael Wong.
The language is formal, full of atmosphere, of romance: love born at night, or under a transparent umbrella or surrounded by rain
Or when he shoots the gentle features of the hands when there is the delivery of the love coin.
Or when the messages with Chinese ideogramsgets wet by tears, it's time for understanding: she has changed her mind.
Photography is sophisticate; lights are an important part of the film because they accompany every phase: the birth, the pause, the end and the return.
It lasts less than 10 minutes but each minute is full of emotion. It is a concise and with well-written script, talking about the logical conception of love.
It is not a realist tale but it is a brilliant fable, valid for all ages; for the Greeks, for the Romans up to the China of the second millennium. Because love is the same, forever.
(1) Apuleius, The fable of Eros and Psyche, Demeter, Verona, 1st edition April 2000. Translated by the author