The Map Of Sex & Love
Picture: C
Sound: B- Extras: C- Main Program: C+
A young Chinese/American videomaker goes to Hong Kong to
make a documentary about a new theme park opening, but gets involved instead
with a young woman still not right from a Belgrade visit and a gay male dancer
he starts to fall for in Evan Chan’s The Map Of Sex & Love
(2001). Like David Searching
(reviewed elsewhere on this site), the gay main character is trying to express
himself through moving images, but this project gets too stuck on that idea,
something that seems to get dragged out because it is on video and video seems
to make potential filmmakers lazy and bankrupt of ideas all of the sudden in
general.
As a matter of fact, every prefabricated slow motion and delayed
motion feature a camera like that can offer is used in the most pointless
ways. I never bought the drama, the
love scenes are badly stylized and the lack of explicitness gives the whole
program an added phoniness to all the not-so-clever camera tricks that anyone
who reads the DV cam manual could do.
The result is a bizarre 132 minutes(!) that is as interesting for its
location shooting in Hong Kong as any storyline.
The 1.33 X 1 videotaped image is on the soft side with
color and detail limits, which is to be expected from such taping on what is
likely, the DV format at 480i. The
result is mixed playback. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Stereo has music added to the location audio and even has Pro Logic
surrounds. The only extra are three
abstract pieces dubbed Music Videos, which make less sense than the
feature. Maybe this is some acquired
taste, so only the most curious should apply.
- Nicholas Sheffo
