Reviewed by: j.crawford Date: 02/25/2008 Summary: perverse, dazzling, beautiful. Scary talented writer-director Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung churns out another piece of pseudo-intellectual claptrap that was specifically designed to wow festival audiences with perverse subject matter, dazzling cinematography, and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack. Chapman To Man-Chat has always been an excellent character actor and he carries the show on his back here while sharing the producer credit with Pang and Jin Zhong-Qiang [Snake Curse, 2004]. I know this is an important film because it elicits vastly different responses from viewers. I enjoyed it as a piece of film making more than a work of fiction. The real star of the film is Macao, a truly amazing location. Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: Anticlimacus Date: 11/12/2007 Summary: Quite Possibly the Best "Art-House" Film Ever Made Ho-Cheung Pang directs this amazing drama with Chapman To and Isabella Leong, who provide the best performances of their careers. Their relationship starts off typical, then veers into a completely different direction with the assistance of a sharply intelligent structure and screenplay. Pang’s exceptional directorial skills are evident here because he is somehow able to transform the most trivial events into charming scenarios. The captured images of Macau are wonderful and the score is soothing. This is a work of art. I do find it incomprehensible that reviewer STSH claims Isabella to be "indulgent", "the lead characters are so unsympathetic", and "a low attempt to remake Days of Being Wild." I must respectfully disagree. In fact, Isabella is so completely opposite of everything this reviewer has asserted that it befuddles me how someone could watch this film and come to those conclusions. Isabella reminded me of Yasujiro Ozu's films that were able to transform everyday events into quaint, highly entertaining experiences. This isn't art-house garbage you'd find in a Tsai Ming-liang film. For those who can appreciate well-crafted, character-driven storyline, this is truly amazing cinema at its finest. That said, STSH gave Ashes of Time a 10/10, which is quite possibly the most overindulgent, putrid attempt at drama I can remember witnessing, with characters so unsympathetic and one-dimensional that watching the entire movie should be considered a new form of torture. So readers may want to take that negative review with a grain of salt. Reviewer Score: 10

Reviewed by: JohnR Date: 04/23/2007 Summary: Another Green World I can't think why anyone would criticize this movie or Edmond Pang for making it, other than they want him to keep making Men Suddenly In Black over and over again. His first four movies fell into neat couples, You Shoot, I Shoot is similar in style and content to MSIB; Beyond Our Ken to AV. With Isabella Pang goes boldly into new territory and his growing maturity as a director is very evident. I was going to say, "maturity and confidence" but he's always had confidence. For me, the movie was not too slow, the two leads were excellent, the cinematography top notch. Knowing what you know after watching the film, ask yourself how you would have told that story on film. How much do you tell the audience and the characters, when, and how? It's not easy, but Pang makes it look easy. Also ask yourself, "why is it named Isabella?" Because the answer to some of those questions is through brief flashbacks, be ready to be a little confused the first time around. Watch it again and you'll see why this is "arthouse bait." It's art. But so what? Reviewer Score: 9

Reviewed by: ewaffle Date: 03/28/2007 “Isabella” seems to be an attempt by Edmund Pang to make a film that would do well on the festival circuit and get good art house play. Its characters are full of secrets and almost always lie to and about each other. Most of the action takes place off screen—it is set just before and after the handover of Macau to the PRC—and is summarized by title cards that also serve to help delineate the structure of the movie. Very little actually happens on screen and even that occurs very slowly. It is lovely to watch and listen to—cinematographer Lam Chi-Kin used a palette limited almost entirely to deep greens, grays and browns with the occasional flash of red and composer Peter Kam Pau-Tat provided a very romantic piano and violin based score. Inspector Ma Jan Shing (Chapman To Man-Tat) and Cheung Bik Yan Isabella Leung Lok-Sze) are not only the main characters they are essentially the only characters other than Yan’s dog. Everyone else in the movie comes and goes at various points but no one has any real effect on things. None of the other characters are interesting in themselves; they are there only to provide information about Shing and Yan, essentially to allow them to tell more lies to each other. Yan confronts a number of Shing’s girlfriends, one night stands and pick-ups, coming up with a story for each of them that will make them go away. Shing knows a surprising secret (actually a secret within a secret) that he only reveals (to the audience but not to Yan) very late in the game. Chapman To is so taciturn that is very lack of expression becomes the way he communicates. After a while he seems somnolent, as if he dozed off in the middle of a scene and Pang kept the camera rolling. Dozing off would not be the worst reaction to much of “Isabella”; many of the scenes are too long, the glances too lingering, the pauses too full of meaning. A lot of the shots are much too long—it looks like Pang forget to say “cut” and fell in love with the images he was creating. Some shots go on for so long that one can easily imagine the storyboards and the blocking instructions on the shooting script. He makes Macau look lovely, an elegantly decayed throwback to an imperial past and he does a wonderful job of lighting and framing his actors but ultimately the lack of pace in “Isabella” is an exercise in self-indulgence. Slow is not bad in itself. Long scenes, long takes and long shots aren’t flaws as such but it takes a very skilled director to use them as much as Pang does here. Eric Rohmer has made riveting films that are mainly characters sitting around an apartment or beach house talking with each other but they are vital, interesting characters who through the course of the film reveal their interior lives. His “Six Moral Tales” are masterpieces of temptations resisted and accepted—and talked about in elegant and seductive ways. Wim Wenders has made enthralling movies which seem to consist of ordinary people talking about ordinary activities. Mentioning Ingmar Bergman would be raising the bar much too high so I won’t. “Isabella” is gorgeous but I wouldn’t want to sit through it in a movie theater where one is more or less captive and without access to a fast forward button. Six points for the audacious effort, the look of Macau, the acting and Pang’s ability to bring out the best in actors. They must trust him immensely. Reviewer Score: 6

Reviewed by: MrBooth Date: 08/05/2006 Summary: 7.5/10 - quite a change of style Ma Jan Shing (Chapman To) is a corrupt and lecherous Macau cop, who picks up a young teenager (Isabella Leung) one night and takes her home. The next day she tells him that... well, let's just say that she's not the first member of her family that he slept with. Ma finds himself becoming a reluctant guardian for the girl, but the two gradually begin to bond, and the experience forces him to question the way he has lived his life. Edmond Pang is best known for his sharply observed high concept comedies, and the novel FULLTIME KILLER. BEYOND OUR KEN was his first attempt at branching out into more serious work, and ISABELLA takes it much further. It's definite festival-bait (and won a Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival, where it premiered) which feels more like the work of Wong Kar-Wai or Lou Ye than of the director of AV (2005). The cinematography is quite lovely, full of saturated colours as it takes us on a tour of the delapidated, old-world feel of Macau before the hand-over and occasional static screens of text tell us about police corruption under Portugese rule. There seems to be a concerted effort to launch Isabella Leung as a "new face" - rather a weird-looking one in my opinion, but not in a bad way. She does seem to have genuine talent as an actress, though she's not yet matured into the job. Chapman To has been seemingly omnipresent for several years now, mostly eliciting negative reactions from Western audiences at least, but his character here is meant to be somewhat unlikeable and he gives quite a strong performance. The film is much more character-driven than his previous works, with only as much "story" as is required to give his characters room to exist and evolve, and even the characters seem to take a back seat to the evocation of atmosphere at times. ISABELLA is certainly a different kind of film from Edmond Pang, perhaps intended to launch his name on the international stage or to create more "respect" at home. Or perhaps he just wanted to try something else. It's definitely an accomplished work and worth a watch, but not as entertaining as his lower-brow efforts (for me at least). Hopefully it's not a sign of a permanent shift of style :-) 7.5/10 Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: dandan Date: 07/26/2006 Summary: the redemption of to... a very enjoyable drama, charting the redemption of a sleazy cop, who's given quite a shock when his, up to this point unknown, daughter arrives in his life. chapman to and isabella leung shine in the two lead roles; if to isn't careful, he could end up being a pretty good actor. people have criticised the pace and the style of the film; i think a lot of people wanted something more akin to pang ho-cheung's comedies and not a drama. as for those who've labelled it a cheap wong kar wai rip-off, i'd say that's a pretty lazy analogy to make; sure there's some doyle-esque cinematography, but the content, pace, subject matter and execution has very little of the qualities of wong kar wai. if anything, i'd say that it looks like pang has been watching a bunch of korean dramas. good stuff.

Reviewed by: STSH Date: 04/25/2006 Summary: Indulgent I'll be struggling to say very much that's good about this movie, despite the Berlin Film Festival logo on the poster. The pace is leisurely. The timeline is mildly chopped up, but this adds only a little to the level of interest. Not a lot of any consequence happens. The story is basically a two-hander, about the at-first-awkward relationship between a bad cop and a lost-looking teenage girl. Many scenes run for too long. I'm not sure whether to ascribe this to editing or direction - probably the latter - but the pace could have benefitted from quite a lot of judicious cutting. There are some bright spots. Any appearance by Anthony Wong, no matter how brief, is always appreciated. Anthony must have packed on the calories with this role, as he spends all of his on-screen time enthusiastically chomping. Considering his apparent relationship with the lead actor, I was surprised to read his role in the end credits as the Superintendent, as it appears that he's more like an informer. The scene where the cop tutors the teenager in bottle smashing technique, using a row of posts as subsitute heads, is one of the few moments of real warmth and humour. Also, I suspect that the Macau tourism bureau had a hand in the making or funding of this film, as the characters go through an at-times-picturesque tour of the attractions of the little former colony (which was just about to become a former colony at the time the story was set, mid-1999). The main problem I have with this film is that the lead characters are so unsympathetic, and the film has no other standout qualities which make up for this lack. Because the cop is such a prick - and this is clearly established at the beginning - I couldn't have cared less about what may happen to him, even as he appears to mellow somewhat as the relationship progresses. And apart from unsympathetic they are, despite the best efforts of the script to show them otherwise, shallow. The impression I was left with at the end was of a low-rate attempt to remake Days Of Being Wild without the star power. Overall, I'd say this movie is competent but dull. Reviewer Score: 2