Lost in the Stars [消失的她] (2023)

This film starts out as a Hitchcockian thriller (The Lady Vanishes). We first see husband He Fei [Zhu Yilong] in a foreign police station being mistreated by the local police. He has gone to a south-east Asian country Balandia (resembling southern Thailand but shot in Hainan) with his wife Li Muzi to celebrate their anniversary but she has disappeared. The police won’t help him and his visa is running out with only five days to find her.

A kindly Chinese-speaking officer offers to help him but then his wife [Janice Man] turns up. Or rather a woman claiming to be his wife because He Fei has never seen her before although all the evidence suggests she is indeed the missing woman. Then top lawyer Chen Mai [Ni Ni] agrees to help He in his plight. So far, so good and it is not clear whether He Fei is delusional or there is a mysterious plot afoot (abduction of Chinese female tourists is suggested).

But after 25 minutes or so, the film starts to lose its way. We get a lengthy flash back to He Fei’s courtship which reveals that his wife is indeed another woman [Kay Huang]. After that we get car chases, deep sea diving, several flashbacks, a jungle pursuit and lots of tourism.

Occasionally, there is a suggestion that there could have been a good film in here as He Fei reveals that there is more to him than meets the eye. This might have been a decent Hitchcockian thriller as in Dead Again. But to describe the plot as it finally appears as ludicrous would be an understatement. To give just one minor example of the many non-sequiturs, the ‘visa running out’ issue is followed up but with no real sense that He will ever be thrown out of Balandia for overstaying. The film could be 30 minute shorter with flashbacks to – for example – Li Muzi meeting her best friend as a child being completely unnecessary.

It’s as though somebody wrote a credible scenario and then everybody else involved screwed it up by adding unnecessary twists. Top suspect must be producer and lead scriptwriter Chen Sicheng (Detective Chinatown) though the use of two directors – Cui Rui and Liu Xiang – is, as always a bad sign.

The always beautiful Ni Ni and the rather handsome Mr. Zhu do the very best they can with the incredible characters (and leaden dialogue) they are lumbered with. The vague suggestions that Ni Ni’s character is romantically interested in her best friend are not followed up (for obvious reasons) but add nothing except mild titillation.

Allegedly based on a late Soviet film Trap for a Lonely Man (1990) though one rather doubts that much survived beyond the basic plot. In any case, the ‘disappearing woman’ plot has been done elsewhere. It deservedly gets only 6.4 on Douban though the box office has been good (top grossing film in June). Just released in China though shown at a Hainan film festival in 2022. She Disappeared in Chinese.