Author-director Giddens Ko (“You Are the Apple of My Eye”) returned to Golden Horse Award-winning form in 2021 with “Till We Meet Again”, a movie adaptation of his best-selling novel “God of Love”. Ko cleverly refreshes the run-of-the-mill romance genre with an infusion of local mythology about life and death. Ko reimagines his underworld as a chaotic dystopian realm, more frightening for its bureaucratic red tape and glitchy IT when dealing with an overpopulation of human souls awaiting either reincarnation or eternal damnation. Traditional deities like Yama the King of Hell, his ghostbuster sidekicks Ox-Head and Horse-Face as well as the usual host of demons (including cameos by Sadako and Toshio) are not who they seem.
Kai Ko turns in an endearing performance as the happy-go-lucky Ah Lun. He suffers an untimely death, has amnesia and faces a choice to either reincarnate as a snail or join the underworld's matchmaking department as a trainee Yue Lao, a god of love and marriage. Ah Lun accepts the job to boost his karma credits and begins a bickering partnership with another trainee, the vivacious Pinky (Gingle Wang) who is also disgruntled by her all too short and tragic life. When Ah Lun stands up for Pinky and as she begins to see him in a new light, he remembers the love of his life Xiao Mi (Vivian Sung), whose future happiness without him is at stake. Vivian Sung never fails to deliver in her girl-next-door roles as is the case here, striking a good balance between cuteness and congeniality.
The movie is unashamedly a romantic tear-jerker but never takes itself too seriously. A delightful musical sequence (soundtracked by Babymetal's catchy Doki Doki Morning) sees the team of enthusiastic love gods, costumed as high schoolers, wielding their magical Red Threads of Fate to matchmake pre-destined couples regardless of gender, race or age. Local jokes are aplenty, especially those involving Taiwanese actor Eddie Peng (which are unfortunately mistranslated for the English subtitles). The slow drip reveal of key plot points and the unveiling of the story in flashbacks, usually annoying when overutilised, actually provides a heartwarming element of surprise. Ko even works in a horror “demon breaks out of hell” subplot, with pretty good CGI action sequences, to address common afterlife themes of revenge, sacrifice and forgiveness. “Till We Meet Again” is now streaming on Disney+.
