Begin Again: A Review

Begin Again is set on Macau, and the island is as much its subject as the people who live there.

We are introduced to A’Le (Sunny Sun) through the eyes of Mai Youge(Chen Haoyu), a working woman on a business trip to Macau. We are sucked into the world of car racing through Han Junhao (Elvis Han) and the woman who snags his interest Chen Jiahui (Zhong Chu Xi). The story unfolds poetically on screen with the camera being our eyes. We dip and glide through their lives sometimes zooming in, sometimes zooming out. With every character incidentally related to each other, it would have been expected almost that their lives would intersect, that we would get plots that involve all of them. However, we watch these lives like bubbles bouncing through the air, occasionally brushing past each other, isolated and complete in themselves.

The narrative is philosophical, whimsical at times. The acting is superlative especially from all the ancillary characters who support our main cast. This is one of those dramas that take the ‘less is more’ adage to heart. We don’t get dialogues when eyes can speak and tears can tell a story. We get silent montages with nothing but ambient noise or lovely background scores to accentuate what unfolds on screen.

The filmmaking is cinematic with a touch of grit. The camera foregoes the gloss and glitz for real and raw. By the time the show ended, I was looking up tickets to Macau.

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