Liao Ming-yi‘s sophomore effort, “Suffocating Love” offers a shape-shifting and genre-bending experience that builds up from a man’s wavering desires and fantasies. While the whole narrative expounds from an exclusively male perspective, the film utilizes its exposition of the protagonist’s psychology to provide a critique of the masculine mind. Liao shot, wrote and directed this journey to the mind of a man through the stages of his pursuit of women, first as a sweet and loving gentleman at the beginning of their relationship, and later, as the romantic who pursues other women as his relationship gets weary.
Suffocating Love is screening at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival
A man who goes by M (Austin Lin) in social media connects with Pai Chia-chi (Chloe Xiang) through an online book exchange community and is instantly smitten by her. Eventually, they become a couple. Chia-chi has her quirks: she is unusually obsessed with cleanliness, imposing her vegetarian lifestyle on M, and is weirdly controlling of his every action. This situation inevitably puts pressure on M that the moment that he meets with an old high school fling, Ai-hsuan (Lin Da-yuan), it opens a path for him to have an affair.
The story of M and Chia-chi is told as though it is a romantic comedy, focusing on the challenges of a young love between an outgoing young man and a reserved maiden. As romantic comedies go, the challenges are its sources of humor: Chia-chi’s obsession with cleanliness changes M’s approach to hygiene while he navigates through his partner’s constant monitoring of his hourly activities while at work. Liao’s iPhone camera-work makes the romantic-comedy treatment intimate and almost personal in texture, highlighting the emotions with a certain profound closeness.
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As emotions intensify, “Suffocating Love” shifts into a different treatment. The moment when M tries to confront Chia-chi about his affair, she opens up instead and begs him, proving that she can change to M’s ideal woman. The night of that confrontation, M dreams of a mysterious room with a man offering him to make one wish of his come true. He then wakes up in his own apartment, beside Yuri Kurosawa (Nikki Hsieh), an influencer that he sees as goddess-like.
Liao wrote all of the scenes as close to M as possible. This makes the movie blinded to the things that M does not see. This limit to perspective brings us closer to understanding the person M is: he is almost as stereotypical of a man driven by his genitals as we think he is, to the point that no one even mentions his name in the whole runtime. This seems to suggest something: is “Suffocating Love” an attempt to understand the figure of M as an everyman?
The intimacy of iPhone cinematography benefits a lot from the great performances of the film’s headliners. Austin Lin’s smug performance as a valentino compliments and contrasts well with Chloe Xiang’s reserved but bold take on the obsessive-compulsive maiden. Nikki Hsieh, however, stands out the most, carrying out her mysterious beauty act almost like a femme fatale character. Hsieh draws the mystery of her influencer persona out towards her mundane gestures as Yuri the girlfriend.
“Suffocating Love” offers more than your standard romantic comedy while zooming into the male psyche. Liao Ming-yi’s direction masterfully intertwines humor with a critical examination of masculinity, all the while maintaining a deeply personal touch through his iPhone camera work. It’s a ride through difficult relationships, searching for romance, and confronting one’s desires.
