User Reviews

I watched this right after I watched Spider Lilies, another film following a similar plot line. Both films have our leads living a very lonely existence looking for love and affection to someone they feel connected too.

While Spider Lilies could have ended with a happy ending because both the leads were lesbians, Love Me If You Can had only a sad ending, since San is quite obviously not interested.

I'm left confused as tho who our main lead is, since San gets a lot of screen time and everything revolves around her, it is Ying's struggle to find love an acceptance that we follow.

If anything works, it is the characters, San is to much of a hero for her time, she's always fighting for the underdog and would willingly do anything to save a friend. Its no wonder that we see character's flock to her in an attempted to be healed by her.

Ying is the most damaged of them all, a young girl born into a bad family with seemingly no way out, her only solace is in the belief that she is one half of the legendary butterfly lovers and San is the other.

The story really never goes anywhere and till the end, we are left in doubt if San return's Ying's feelings.

The movie could have done with a better director and script writer, the two leads are effective and look the part, but the film's lack on concrete narration and disjointed editing really distracted from the overall effect of the film. the director choose to use a very simplistic style of camera work, making the audience feel like we are standing right in the scene, but when you through in excessive violence, well, then its just pretentious.

The young actress playing Ying was nominated for a Golden Horse Award for this film, she did not win, and I agree, she was believable as Ying and had such innocence to her that watching her demise was very disturbing. However, she was raw and sometimes she breaks out of character like she was unsure of portrayal, given better direction, she could have been so much more. there were also times she seemed so uncharacteristically strong that I wonder if this was the actress herself or was Ying more than what I had believed her to be.

The actress who play's San was more consistent but her character gave her little room for movement since San was never given the chance to redefine her feelings for Ying, nor was she give room to doubt herself and her feelings to those around her.

As I said earlier, this is San's life but its Ying's story that we follow.

In total, this is a film hard to connect to, it was to all over the place to really make it an effective film, but there were some gem's and some would be gem's.

Only for those who want to site through an incomplete story with a violent ending that didn't need to be.

I came away from watching this moody film amazed by how good the music blends with the film. The visuals of everyday life in a Taiwanese fishing village gives a rare insight into a country most known for its computer parts. Anyway, the film revolves around San and Ying, two female cousins who haven't seen each other since young. Ying has always been convinced that she's a reincarnation of a legendary Chinese lover, and she's looking for her true love's reincarnation, and at first she believes its San. Unfortunately San doesn't remember much of Ying and Ying's severely disappointed. The show takes on a bisexual tone when Ying falls for San's supposed boyfriend Bin. Actually the director leaves a lot of gaps and doesn't really explain the relationship the characters are in, which suits the film. A twist brings an end to the film, but there's a sequel in Free as Love ( Fu sheng ruo meng ).