The End...

Had the worst experience of my life yesterday.

It's 2a.m. And I still can't sleep.

I took out a DVD of Turn Left, Turn Right from where it has been forgotten in one of the drawers at home. Yes, it's a very old movie.

I did not like the magical realism part at the start of the movie where I thought it was going to turn out as a horror flick. I was watching it alone one early morning so it scared me and I couldn't concentrate on the rest of the film.

But this time, I did like it. Although it is still not one of my favorites.

The story is about John Liu a musician, played by Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Eve Choi, a translator, played by Gigi Leung. They have met when they were in secondary school, had a crush on each other, but due to certain circumstances, never met again.

Thirteen years later, they live next door to each other in Taipei, though neither of them know. They always take opposite directions when they leave their apartments, although they manage to end up at a huge intersection, lost in the crowd. They always often are in the same place but they never meet.

As a poster featured briefly in the movie says: Life is full of coincidences. Two parallel lines may one day meet.

So indeed they met again at a park, reminiscent of their first meeting. They spend the day with her reciting to him a poem and he playing a piece with his violin. But then it rains and they scribble hurriedly their phone numbers before they part. Predictably, the numbers get smudged by the rain and they spend the next few days longing for each other, not knowing that they were just next door, separated by a freaking wall.

Their seemingly hopeless fate is aided by two pesky characters that really annoyed me. A delivery girl from a Chinese canteen and a doctor.

As in most movies, these two annoying characters ended up with each other (quite a deserved feat) and to make up for their cruelty, aid the two lovers to reunite toward the end. But not before playing their pesky characters to the hilt, thinking perhaps they were being charming.

But before that happy ending, there's a twist that only a miracle of love could perhaps iron out.

He's finally realising his dream to be a world-class musician and is leaving for Vienna to join an orchestra; she on the other hand is also leaving to work for an American publisher. And of course, to drive home the movie's point of life's coincidences (there are a lot of coincidences in this movie I have lost count), they are leaving on the same day.

But they couldn't leave without a last ditch at finding each other, right?

The resolution involves a phone call, an earthquake and a torn-down wall. Not very difficult to figure out, really, especially if you have watched many movies.

What I do like is the poem that Eve repeatedly recites throughout the film:

Chance had been playing with them

Not yet wholly ready to transform fate for them

It approached them

Then backed off

Stood in their way

And suppressing a giggle

Jumped to the side.

How I wished that Chance would jump to the side soon and let fate take its course for her and me and things wouldn;t come to an end.