Love Off the Cuff starts with a horror movie, a tale set in the recent past about a village terrorized by a monster that eats children. As creepy as it is ridiculous, it functions as a none-too-subtle allegory for the crisis at the heart of the relationship between Cherie (Miriam Yueng) and Jimmy (Shawn Yue), which we’ve seen grow from its beginnings at shared cigarette breaks in Love in a Puff to the inevitable break-up/reunion cycle in Love in the Buff. Seven years on from the first film (which remains arguably the best romantic film of the decade), Cherie and Jimmy are comfortably living together back in Hong Kong, but visits from long-lost family members serve to highlight the rut they’ve found themselves in. Cherie’s father, who abandoned her, her mother and her brother years ago, shows up with a very young bride-to-be and looks to party with Jimmy. While Jimmy’s visiting godmother turns out to be a much younger woman (“She’s from Canada, they’re very liberal there. What if she prances about in her bra?” Cherie fearfully exclaims). The two visits inspire insecurity in Cherie: she’s jealous of the younger woman and fearful that Jimmy will turn out like her lecherous father, but more devastatingly they highlight the degree to which she was already dissatisfied with Jimmy’s childishness.
Seattle Screen Scene 