2.5 stars (out of 5)
Hopelessly perfectionist co-writer/director Wong Kar Wai/Kar Wai Wong is best known for mysterious, swoonily romantic efforts like In The Mood For Love, 2046 and My Blueberry Nights, yet this awfully overcooked epic is a wannabe-mighty historical drama, a costume piece and a ‘chopsocky’ (sorry) action movie. And it conclusively demonstrates that this over-revered filmmaker has serious problems handling all three of those genres.
Announced 10 years ago (which means that other directors quickly leapt onto the bandwagon with their own versions and beat Wong to the punch), this is the true story of Ip Man (Wong’s favourite actor Tony Leung), a legendary figure in the martial art Wing Chun. After an embarrassingly edited-all-over-the-place fight scene that wants to be Matrix-like, we get down to the slow, sometimes incoherent business of detailing how Ip (sometimes ‘Yip’) was born into wealth, lost it all in the Sino-Japanese war, and how he then moved from China to Hong Kong with only his amazing skills. Wong also wants this to be another tale of star-crossed lovers like his In The Mood For Love, and so it chronicles how Ip was separated from his wife and, later, never quite got together with Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), daughter of the disgraced Gong Yutian (Wang Qingxiang), all with needlessly huge close-ups and lots of hand-wringing agonising.
Assisted in its distribution outside Asia by Martin Scorsese and other luminaries, this seriously disappointing outing is most notable for Wong’s ludicrous overuse of slo-mo and a lame mosaic effect straight out of an ‘80s music video (a tacky trick surely added during those endless hours in the editing room). It first appears in the opening fight scene (which is shot in fake rain to obscure the wires – or maybe just the phoniness) but then, as if he sensed that his swollen pic needed something extra, he applies it to love scenes, important dialogue sequences, an interlude that features dozens of extras and more – and it looks dreadful. And furthermore, who else but Wong Kar Wai would dare tell the story of Ip Man, whose greatest claim to fame today is the fact that he taught Bruce Lee, and deliberately not include any glimpse of Lee (or some actor playing him)? Or did he edit Bruce out, afraid that his appearance would spoil the pretentious, lumbering mood?
I Wake Up Screening 