'Lover's Discourse' star Kay Tse has a secret crush
Canto pop queen Kay Tse made her latest foray into Hong Kong movies with a major role in "Lover's Discourse."
The romantic flick focuses on the intersection of six love stories. Tse portrays a shy laundry girl who has a secret crush on one of her customers.
The film screened this year at the Pusan International Film Festival and is part of the current Hong Kong Asian Film Festival.
CNNGo: In "Lover's Discourse" you play a girl who works in a laundromat and has a crush on a customer, a dentist. Could you personally relate to the character?
Kay Tse: If you have ever had a secret crush on someone, you'll like her. The character that I play, Ah Chi, she's a little kooky. She loves to daydream a lot, and so do I.
In one scene, Ah Chi imagines herself as a nurse working for the dentist, her crush.
In her daydream, they tend to patients together and they are supposed to pay attention to the patient, but Chi imagines that the two of them are so into each other that they completely forget the patient.
CNNGo: So you actually had to play several different roles in Ah Chi’s daydreams?
Tse: Ah Chi’s imaginary world is totally surreal. I could be a martial arts heroine in one scene and imagine the dentist as a wounded hero.
Or I could be a nineteenth-century British girl, waving my lover goodbye and then crying myself to bed alone.
I believe we are all familiar with these silly imaginations when we have a secret crush.
Ah Chi was so immersed in her secret crush, she never had a real conversation with the dentist. She found out all what she wanted to know by investigating the dentist’s clothes when he brought them to the laundromat.
She found out he is a dentist because of the name tag on his uniform.
When she found a ticket inside his trousers’ pockets, she went to the same cinema and watched the same movie at the same time of the day, sitting next to the seat where he sat. She wanted to imagine that they had watched the movie together.
CNNGo: Ah Chi sounds obsessive. Yet she is not brave enough to talk to the dentist. Don’t you find her bitter and lonely?
Tse: Ah Chi did not feel bitter. She is satisfied.
Her actions are exactly what we do when we start to fall in love with someone. A crush is an illusion about the person before you actually start dating the person. You enjoy it all because it is all your fantasy.
In this movie, Karena Lam has a line I love very much. She says, “We miss each other only because we have never dated.”
I think Ah Chi would also agree with this line. We enjoy illusions a lot more before the relationship actually starts.
CNNGo: In Ah Chi’s daydream scenes, you had to act with a toy figure, not a real person. What was that like?
Tse: Ah Chi is really imagining love with the toy figure. It is very safe to fall in love with a toy figure because it is all in your control.
CNNGo: Do you have plans to further your movie career?
Tse: All depends on opportunities. I met the directors of “Lover's Discourse” (Derek Tsang and Jimmy Wan) several years ago, and they involved me when they planned the movie and wrote the script to let me understand what the message behind the story is.
I feel that my performance improved much compared with the previous two movies I was in and I hope to play in another movie if I come across a role that suits me.
CNNGo: You just went to Pusan International Film Festival with the directors to meet the audience and press. What was that like?
Tse: It was my first time in Pusan and I found the audience very passionate. People always preface their questions by saying how much they loved the movie. It was really encouraging.
The film festival is a big event in Korea and the Korean audience is more into asking questions than the Hong Kong audience. I think it is most important to enjoy a movie with a relaxed mind and just have fun.
