TAINTED LOVE (鹦鹉杀) (2023)

Genre: Crime/Drama
Director: Ma Yongxin
Cast: Zhou Dongyu, Zhang Yu, Zhang Youhao
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 21 September 2023

Synopsis: Directorial debut feature by Spain-based female director Ma Yingxin narrates a woman’s search for truth after suffering from romance fraud. The star-studded cast jointly carries out the psychological hide-and-seek between the victims and offenders. The traumatic experience leads the woman to a small town for an answer, she meets two oddly familiar men who might be connected to the scam. Clung to the obstinate questioning of the authenticity of the romance, she must make her own choice in the face of another crisis.

Movie Review:

No, you ain’t seeing double – that indeed is Zhou Dongyu headlining ‘Tainted Love’, barely weeks after taking us on a heady jaunt to the border city of Yanji in Anthony Chen’s ‘The Breaking Ice’. Though both films are thematically and narratively dissimilar, it is somewhat inevitable that they be compared against each other, and in that regard, we can say the latter is the relatively more compelling one.

Instead of a disenchanted young adult in her 20s, Zhou here plays a 30-year old single woman from Beijing named Zhou Ran, who journeys to a seaside town in search of the man she had met online who had cheated her feelings and of her money nine months ago. Said person whose real name is Lin Zhiguang (Zhang Yu) had said that he was working in Singapore no less, and after she had transferred her life savings to his bank account, promptly disappeared without a trace.

Accompanying her on her search is fellow love scam victim Ning (Li Meng), who is likewise looking for the guy who had cheated her. That guy turns out to be none other than Zhiguang’s buddy Xu Zhao (Zhang Youhao), though Ning will only find that out much much later, and way after Zhao develops a crush on Ran. That also doesn’t stop Zhiguang from falling in love with Ran, and Ran to reciprocate Zhiguang’s affections for her, threatening a fallout between the two scammers who were once part of a network proliferating such crimes.

It's clear that writer-director Ma Yongxin intends for her audience to keep guessing if Ran has truly fallen for Zhiguang yet again or if she is ultimately playing the same game he did on her before in order to teach him a lesson. Likewise, we are also supposed to wonder if Zhiguang is simply trying to scam Ran yet again, especially given how we are told he is still heavily indebted. And then there is Zhao, who remains curiously ignorant about how Ran and Zhiguang have been going on with each other behind his back for most of the movie, before suddenly realising how he’s been played out by Zhiguang.

Were the three characters less inscrutable, the suspense would have been interesting; alas, the ambiguity gets increasingly frustrating, as it becomes clear that the characters are not deliberately, but inadvertently obtuse. It doesn’t help that Zhou’s performance is too restrained, so much so that you’ll feel exasperated by the end of it all. Even if Ran and/or her fellow characters are meant to be conflicted by their greed and their feelings for one another, the film just lacks the finesse to portray these nuances with the right degree of precision.

So for the most part, ‘Tainted Love’ remains deeply unsatisfying. It isn’t clear who is playing who, or for that matter, if these characters are even clear about their own personal motivations. As well intentioned as it may be to shed light on the victims of such love scams, it ultimately feels like a scam itself, leading you on without knowing where exactly it wants to bring you to or what it is trying to say. And that is why between this and 'The Breaking Ice', we’d rather be spending time with the latter than trying to break down what this trio is really up to.

Movie Rating:

(You'd rather be 'breaking ice' than trying to break down what this muddled trio are playing with one another)

Review by Gabriel Chong