Yan Minjun Movies

A former doctor believes he may have found a connection to the woman he loved and lost in this romantic melodrama. Ko (Andy Lau) is a young doctor married to Zi-qing (Charlene Choi), but while he has a beautiful and caring wife, Ko’s career is time consuming and he doesn’t get to spend as much time with his spouse as he’d like. After Ko breaks a dinner date with Zi-qing, she’s driving home when her car is struck by another driver; she dies shortly afterward. Shattered by the news, Ko leaves behind his career as a doctor and takes a job driving an ambulance. When Ko answers an emergency call at a car crash, he finds himself looking after Tse Yuen-sam (Charlie Young), a school teacher who recently received a heart transplant. Zi-qing donated her internal organs for transplant, and Ko senses that Yuen-sam now carries the heart of his late wife. Eager to know more about Yuen-sam, Ko finds her home and reads her diary, learning that her love life has not been happy – she was married to a dress designer who was having an affair with a model, and Yuen-sam confronted him with the news, he opted to divorce her and take up with Amber Xu. Having saved Yuen-sam’s life, he now takes it upon himself to help her find the kind of happiness he lost when Zi-qing died. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Yim Ho followed up The Day the Sun Turned Cold with this film, produced by its lead actress Zhang Yu. One of a series of epic tales told by the Fifth Generation Chinese filmmakers of the 1990s, The Sun Has Ears or Taiyang You Er is the story of a northern Chinese peasant wife in the 1920s whose personal life is played out against a background of sweeping political change. You You (Zhang Yu) and her debt-ridden peasant husband Tian You must search the barren fields for food during a widespread depression, eating bark and battling mice for seeds. They meet up with an unscrupulous bandit leader, Pan Hao, a warlord who has become a lieutenant in the Nationalist Army. Pan Hao lusts after You You, but she resists. Her husband, however, wants to trade his wife for political capital, so he "loans" her to Pan Hao for ten days. During this time, You You is surprised to discover that the bandit leader, though abusive, arouses new sexual and emotional feelings in her. She prefers the powerful political leader over her inept and dull husband and accompanies Pan Hao as he is pursued by the monarchy's forces. Meanwhile, her husband has bumbled his way into a leadership position in a rival band of military strongmen. Inevitably, the two men meet in battle. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide