“Pali Road”
Not rated
**
Opens today
Some movies you just sort of let wash over you, and you leave the theater and the experience evaporates. “Pali Road” — a suspense mystery shot entirely in Hawaii — is the other kind of film, one that sticks and resonates, and is seemingly designed to kick-start a spirited discussion afterward.
It isn’t simple, although it also isn’t deep.
The international cast is led by Taiwanese star Michelle Chen as Lily, a newly minted doctor who is studying medicine in the United States before being expected to return to China after she completes her residency requirement at a busy Honolulu hospital. Lily’s boyfriend, Neil (Jackson Rathbone, “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn”), is a dedicated grade-school teacher who expects her to marry him and live happily ever after. Lily also has another rival for her affections, Mitch (Sung Kang, “Fast and Furious”), a well-to-do doctor who sort of hovers in the background and whose expectations for her are ill-defined.
Lily’s parents expect her to do whatever they wish. Lily’s expectations for herself are rather fuzzy, and when faced with decisions about her life’s path, she kind of shuts down.
Everyone, including Lily, assumes her life will follow a preset prescription. Maybe this film should have been called “Great Expectations.”
Then Lily and Neil have a car crash on spooky Old Pali Road late one night. Lily wakes up, not in the hospital, but some years later, apparently happily married to Mitch and with a young son she is supposed to adore. But Lily has no memory of this. Worse, Neil seems to have vanished, to the point of never having existed.
Lily spends the rest of the film trying to figure out just what the heck is going on, and it proceeds in dream logic, with visual clues that have the weight of memes; characters appearing out of nowhere, vaguely threatening or curiously empathetic; familiar places that shift oddly; gorgeously photographed commercial tie-ins — oh wait, that’s old-fashioned product placement. (Hawaiian Airlines, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and Hawaii-as-a-tourist-destination certainly get their money’s worth).
“Pali Road” is a Chinese film made for Chinese audiences, with an eye toward an overseas foreign market, and that’s us for once. And why not? China is the largest film market in the world. Chinese citizens love movies, and what’s more, they love the communal experience of viewing movies in theaters and chatting about them afterward. We tend to get the Chinese exports that are huge blockbusters, but there’s clearly also a market for a slight, romantic mystery that in the United States would air on the Lifetime channel.
Technically, “Pali Road” is certainly well-visualized, with spectacular digital photography by Quyen Tran. The musical score noodles fitfully along in the background (music in films like this is almost a key character, and “Pali Road” is disappointing in this regard). Director Jonathan Lim, working from a script by Victoria Arch and Doc Pedrolie, has an elegant visual style and an unsettling sense of pacing, so that’s all to the good.
As Mitch, Kang is quite good, alternating between warmly affectionate and lizardlike predatory. As a friendly psychologist (I think), Henry Ian Cusick (the “Lost” and “The 100” actor who lives in Kailua) is just about the only no-nonsense chap in the cast. As Neil, Rathbone contributes not much more than lovely cheekbones and a metrosexual twinkle; but then, his role is really supposed to be illusionary, isn’t it?
Chen is expected to carry the film, and doesn’t quite make it. She’s passive instead of reactive, her English sounds phonetic and occasionally dubbed — and there’s no trace of a Chinese accent; what would have been the harm in that? But mainly — and this is criminally unfair to Chen — she simply looks too girly-girl. The character is a young woman, true, but Chen is one of those folks who will always look like they’re 12 years old.
And this is the killer: There’s zero chemistry between Lily and Neil. No thunder and lightning, no sparks, not even a damp squib. The whole movie rides on that spark, and not having it lit is the difference between a memorable film, one that sticks in your soul, and spending a pleasant, prettily photographed couple of hours.
I have my own theory about “Pali Road’s” denouement, and you’ll have yours, and you’ll have a good time chatting about it afterward. But not for long after.
A word about it being filmed in Hawaii. Hawaii looks great in the movie, and the story didn’t demand that it be so. This film could have been made anywhere, and it’s a good sign that Hawaii is no longer considered exotic.
