Lost in Love

"Lost in Love" is a series that stars Marianne Chan Mui Ying, Jackie Liu, Fennie Yuen Kit Ying, So Yuk Wah, Ng Wing May, So Chi Wai, Lillian Ho Ka Lei, and Ng Ka Lok. The series supposedly uses the ancient tradition of chinese embroidery sewing to explore today's love relationships between man and woman. Back in the old days, when a woman gets married, it is considered necessary (good luck) for her to wear a traditional gown with a dragon and phoenix sewn on it. The gown itself symbolized that husband and wife will stay together to old age. In contrast to the ideal idea of the gown that woman only wears it once in her lifetime is today's society where divorce and casual love are common things.

To me, the utopian idea of love symbolized by the gown is hypocritical. Did not ancient chinese men have mistresses, plenty of concubines, and in a time of arranged marriages, can anything be said about true love? It seems more logical to say that such customs were invented by men to try to keep their women in place without question. "Lost" has Marianne's father stubbornly hold on to this ideal--if it was ever ideal to begin with--as if love today is not taken seriously anymore and the past is some romantic world void of unfaithfulness.

The series focuses on three couples, where we have Lin Tin Wai (Jackie Liu) losing that special spark with his wife (Marianne Chan) and falling for Ng Wing May. Fennie Yuen falls from one bad relationship to another while Jackie Liu's brother is also cheating on his wife. If "Lost" wanted to show unhappy marriages and unfaithful men of today, it succeeded. The only problem is that one must ask then what? At least unhappy couples are able get a divorce, unlike couples of the past. So is holding on to old traditions so very important?

And if there is one thing that irritates me is when a series tries to convey to the viewer that a character is very cultured. Ng Wing May plays a photographer who, because she admired the past works of Jackie Liu, came to work for him as an assistant photographer in his photo studio. Frankly, Ng just gives off the impression that she's very rude as she critiques Jackie's style and preaches unconvincingly that she knows much about ART.

A quaint factor in the series should have been the history of chinese embroidery sewing but the producers made sewing seem like a kung-fu martial arts. A cameo appearance with Yuen Wah at the end only proves the point. "Lost" does, however, make one ponder about just how much love exists when a couple gets married for years and the passion has dulled down. The series sets up so that Marianne Chan's character is quite at fault for her marriage break-up--lack of communication with her husband--and Ng Wing May as the third party is redeemed by the fact that the feelings between her and Jackie is real. When "Lost" ended, it did not even seem like an ending as many subplots were left hanging.

Images from TVB