Memory of Love opens as surgeon Li Xun [Li Naiwen] and his wife He Sizhu [Yan Bingyan] attend a party at which his colleague Qian Cheng [Wang Jianing] announces his engagement to girlfriend LiLi [Wang Chuan].
The following day, two people seriously injured in a car crash arrive in Li’s hospital. They turn out to be Sizhu and her lover, dance teacher Chen Mo [Jiao Gang]. Both recover but Sizhu has lost her memory for the last three years and believes she is back at a stage when she and Li were falling in love. It also emerges that she had previously gone out with Qian and that Li had been seeing her behind Qian’s back at this time.
Li begins to recreate their previous life, returning to Lake Qiandao where they had first fallen in love, and reliving their wedding preparations (down to retaking the wedding photographs in the same clothes).
But he knows that Chen Mo is in Sizhu’s future and, ostensibly to help her recall the past, he introduces her to Chen.
Both Li Naiwen and Yan Bingyan are excellent. He comes across initially as a classic upwardly mobile Chinese professional but gradually reveals his love for (or obsession with) his wife. Yan is perfectly cast as the object of that obsession.
The film, directed by Wang Chao and shot in and around Hangzhou, is shot in striking grays and greens. It begins with a very distanced approach but the characters gradually become more engaged (and engaging).
The movie is really about having a second chance and trying to recreate a lost love.
It’s a compelling story of obsession and betrayal. Although the ending seems modestly optimistic, one might not have very much hope that history will not repeat itself.
The film does not appear to have been commercially released in China (and scores a predictable 5.6 of Douban) but deserves to be more widely seen.
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