Movie review: My Missing Valentine
For a quirky, lighthearted Taiwanese romantic comedy to amass 11 nominations at the upcoming Golden Horse Awards is really quite a feat.
My Missing Valentine is far from conventional awards bait and is a whimsical breath of fresh air.
Writer-director Chen Yu-hsun's film revolves around a lonely post office worker (Patty Lee) whose love life finally picks up when she meets a handsome stranger (Duncan Chou) who asks her out on a Valentine's Day date.
But she wakes up on Feb 14 and realises the entire day has disappeared, with zero recollections.
Things slowly start to make sense when we are introduced to a background character - her strange customer (Liu Kuan-ting) who stops by the post office to send a letter every day.
My Missing Valentine has shades of the 2003 Takeshi Kaneshiro-Gigi Leung movie Turn Left Turn Right about a similarly star-crossed couple, if you dig that kind of thing.
And the less you know of the plot, the better.
When the big reveal comes, together with a major shift in character perspective in the second half, it is quite rewarding, complete with a heavy dose of bittersweet nostalgia.
Rating: PG13
Score: 3/5
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