Love is Beautiful
Warning! Some Spoilers!
Rarely do I see a series that brings up so many issues of human nature. "Love is Beautiful" is the Asian counterpart to John Woo's Hollywood movie "Face Off" that had starred Nicholas Cage and John Travolta in a story about two men, cop and crook, who get a "face-lift" and switch identities. "Love", on the other hand, is set in ancient China and focuses on two women characters played by Marianne Chan Mui Ying and Anne Heung Hoi Lam.
The general plot is about Ling Wan and Chor Chor, two friends who grow up together mocked for their physical ugliness in, ironically, a village called "Mei Yun (Beautiful People) Chuen". Ling Wan (Anne Heung at the beginning), despite her outer appearance, is a caring, filial, and honest person. Chor Chor (played excellently by Marianne Chan at the beginning) is a despicable, selfish person who deceives and steals. She gets a glimpse at how differently everyone will treat her when Sieu Tao, the face changer, temporarily puts a beautiful face mask (cameo appearance of Charmaine Sheh) on her. She becomes very envious when she realizes that Ling Wan is not really ugly, but has been drawing in her ugly marks on her face all along.
Under circumstances, Ling Wan saves the life of the emperor (Eddie Chueng Siu Fai) who was out on a trip outside of the palace. He was attacked by followers of his royal uncle, who secretly plotted to overthrow him. The king is impressed by Ling Wan's good heart so that when some villagers mock Ling Wan's ugliness, he promises to marry her in front of them. Ling Wan then reveals her true face to the king, who is instantly captivated by her beauty. They hold a wedding the night following but the king is kidnapped halfway and later has to return back to the palace. However, he sends men out with orders to escort Ling Wan back to the palace and announced her as a concubine.
Meanwhile, Chor Chor had gotten into some serious trouble with the law and must escape from the village. When she sees how lucky Ling Wan is to have to the affections of the king, she becomes very jealous and begs Sieu Tao to switch their faces. Sieu Tao agrees when she promises that he will have riches and power if she became cocubine. So on the night before Ling Wan leaves for the palace, her face is swapped with Chor Chor's, along with her identity and good fortune. This is the beginning of their story. Marianne Chan plays Ling Wan for the rest of the series while Anne Heung is Chor Chor.
Anne Heung as an evil person is definitely more bearable than a repeat of her previous role from "Legend of Lady Yang". Either her acting ability has improved or that glaring and sneering for most of the series is very easy to accomplish. It very evident though when Anne Heung became Chor Chor that her acting ability is far below that of Marianne Chan. Anne was unable to portray Chor Chor's streetwise and despicable personality effectively.
Eddie Cheung put up a good performance as the emperor, though not very distinct since his character was overshadowed by Ling Wan and Chor Chor. Marco Ngai's character as the "face changer" man, Sieu Tao, was quite...dumb! Is he supposed to be old or young? What TVB intended by casting him as a character who has a full head of white hair but whose skin is not wrinkled at all is beyond my comprehension. His character was alright at the beginning but towards the end, the silly evil laugh and manic actions that he has is just plain stupid, not to mention annoying--overacting on Marco Ngai's part and bad script writing on the production part.
Marianne Chan is probably one of the best actresses that TVB has who can play both a likeable and dislikable with so much ease. Her transition from Chor Chor to Ling Wan was done very well, similar to her performance in "Life to Life", where you hate her at the beginning and then can easily like her. Marianne Chan is also one of those rare actresses who will not mind being portrayed in an ugly light--how many actresses would want to hurt their image by playing Chor Chor the way she did?
The little kid who played the young Chui Don, Chor Chor's son, was a pretty darn good actor for his age. I wanted to slap him myself when I heard the kind of fresh words coming out of his mouth. His scenes with Marianne Chan were some of most emotional scenes of the series.
I never thought that the king loved Ling Wan Leung--or at least not until he was much older and beauty perhaps did not matter that much to him anymore. At the beginning, he only said he would marry Ling Wan for two reasons (my theory anyway). One was gratitude for saving his life. Two is pride, because he just wanted to prove a point to the villagers that he will marry Ling Wan even though she is ugly. Actually, he admits this once he returns to the palace and says that he can't stop thinking about her after he has seen her real face. He also said to Ling Wan when he saw the picture of her that her dad had drawn to attract marriage prospects that if such a beautiful woman existed, he would definitely marry her. Whether he will keep his promise if he still thought Ling Wan was ugly or just push this aside as a silly heat of the moment decision, we would never know. Aside from that, how can he say he loves her when he did not even detect anything amiss when Chor Chor became Ling Wan? Chor Chor had so many bad habits (picking at her ear wax) in her mannerism that it is hard to imagine the king never suspecting--or minding! Beauty seemed to matter to him so much that he even admits to not wanting to eat after seeing Ling Wan's new face and would overlook so many flaws in Chor Chor.
The other question is whether Ling Wan loved the king. She probably did--though this seemed a bit unbelievable given the time that they were together--and the power of love must be very strong for her to love such a weak man. She was so faithful to the king even though he doubts her time and time again.
Can there exist a more naive and good person than Ling Wan Leung? As the plot has the character say, Chor Chor literally stole her face, her husband, and her son. So it is quite unbelievable when she forgives or lets Chor Chor go scot free every time.
Do all series about kings have to have some villainous relative plot to rid them of the throne? I think "Love" would've been a much better series if they cut out the talk about fate and mandates of heaven. The whole thing about how a king is chosen by heaven to become emperor is a lot of hogwash. I guess I agree with the uncle's view that it is unfair and wrong that an incompetent person is made king because of birth. Not that I think the uncle is a good person, but what he says is not necessarily wrong.
A morality issue also comes up to mind. Wan Leung went to many means to save her real son, Chui Hei, who undoubtably had caused the misery and deaths of many innocent peasant lives for his entertainment. Yet, she belittles her own morals and beliefs by excusing her son's behavior by claiming he's really a good person inside who was corrupted by Chor Chor. While it's true that Chor Chor did shape his mean personality, he is also as much at fault. Just because someone gives you a knife to kill another person doesn't exonerate blame on you if you go ahead to kill--which is exactly what Chui Hei does when Chor Chor hands him a dagger to stab Chui Don. Wan Leung also tries to justify that she was to blame since she hasn't been there for her son to teach him the difference between right and wrong. This is another silly statement. Yes, if a child goes bad, the parent has some blame but in the end, you shouldn't punish the parent, you punish the culprit.
At the end, Wan Leung does manage to bring Chui Hei back into kindness but does that free him from punishment? This was such a faulty point in the series since it basically puts the prince's life above that of a commoner. Just because he is the son of the main character does not mean that I, as a viewer, would like to see him live. I would have much preferred that Chui Hei finally repents but is still executed. On a side note, I see this casual deaths of non-main characters in many movies. It's the nature of movies to make us symphasize with main characters but it does make one ponder... for instance, Tse Sun in "Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber" killed so many innocent lives in trying to get his seefu to reveal himself. At the end, he permitted all the families and related members of the victims to punish him, however, does repention also mean total forgiveness? This is a crime and punishment question that I won't pretend to know how to answer (I'm off on a tangent).
"Love" is an engaging series and almost ruins it with an atrocious ending. The whole line about how "good people will have good endings" is so lame at the end--if they'd just take out that one line that everyone says at the end, I would've given this series a better rating. I am not being cynical, but compared to the villains in the series, I would say that the "good" persons have suffered so much more. For instance, the king's mother was a good person, but she was killed in cold blood. Chui Hei was a bad boy throughout most of his life but he still got a second chance while many people under his circumstances would surely have been killed for his crimes. The king himself, is a pretty darn lucky man who does not deserve Wan Leung's love at all. Chor Chor lived most of her life in wealth and power even though she tried to destory Wan Leung in so many instances. Yet, at the end, she still has an extremely filial son who would give up the throne to save a mother who never cared for him. Death for her seemed like such a good ending for her.
I can not figure out whether the English title is playing on words by saying love is based on beauty or not. It would certainly make more meaning if it was intentionally meant to say that love is not beautiful (inner beauty), but rather, (and unfortunately true in many cases) based on physical beauty. If you've ever studied human nature, physical beauty is still the very first thing that a man will look at, throughout all of human history. It is a fact of life because physical beauty is supposedly an indicator of good genes. Statistical studies have been made that show people, men or women, will have a tendency to treat good looking people better than those physically less attractive. It is quite interesting to note when Chor Chor claims that it is of course easy to be a good person when you are born beautiful because people will naturally judge you first on your looks and like you.
Aside from all these criticisms, "Love" was an entertaining series that had many good moments and is worth the time to watch. Just skip the ending. Once again, I emphasize, in film, show, not tell! That's a big fault of many TVB series--they spend too much effort in explaining through dialogues when letting the viewer see through actions is so much more effective.
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