Lost In The Stars (2023 Film)

''Lost in the Stars'' () is a 2022 Chinese mystery crime film directed by Cui Rui and Liu Xiang, and starring Zhu Yilong, Ni Ni and Janice Man. The film is adapted from Alexey Korenev's 1990 Soviet comedy film ''A Trap for Lonely Man'' and French playwright Robert Thomas' 1960 play ''Trap for a Lonely Man'' (''Piege Pour un Homme Seul''). It tells the story of He Fei's wife Li Muzi who disappeared mysteriously during the wedding anniversary trip. It's a film about a story of a shocking case. The film's style have been described by some critics as "Hitchcockian".

The film premiered at the Hainan International Film Festival on 25 December 2022 and released theatrically in China on 22 June 2023.

Plot

He Fei and his wife Li Muzi are celebrating the first anniversary of their marriage at an island resort in Barlandia, a fictional Southeast Asian country. When Muzi goes missing, the local police refuse to open an investigation, citing the lack of evidence of a crime. Two weeks later, He Fei angrily confronts the police and is thrown out of the station. However, a man named Officer Zheng, who is fluent in Chinese, expresses some sympathy towards him. He Fei wakes up the next day and finds an unknown woman in his room pretending to be Muzi. She possess a fake passport with Muzi's name. He Fei summons Officer Zheng, only to find that photographs of Muzi on his phone have been replaced with photographs of the unknown woman. Moreover, the woman knows intimate personal details that only Muzi should know. He Fei goes to a book store to find surveillance footage of his wife purchasing a book, but the footage has been replaced to include the woman instead. At a bar, He Fei sees a news segment about a successful lawyer named Chen Mai, and hires her to prove that the unknown woman is not Muzi.

Chen Mai finds evidence that the unknown woman is part of a criminal group who steals the identities of wealthy men's wives. Chen Mai notices that a car is following she and He Fei around Barlandia. She leads He Fei to a hideout where they find further evidence of the group's identity theft activities. As they exit the hideout, they are pursued by a mercenary who tries to kill them with a shotgun, but they successfully escape. Chen Mai then tracks down the local photographer who took photographs of He Fei and Muzi. The photographer demands money in exchange for testifying to the police. He Fei pays the photographer. On the way to the police station, Chen Mai accuses He Fei of hiding something from her. He Fei fires Chen Mai and tries to exit her jeep with the photographer. A sniper who was following them shoots and kills the photographer. He Fei decides to leave and return to China, but the unknown woman confronts him in his resort's room. The woman hits her own head with a glass bottle, whereupon security guards enter the room and arrest He Fei.

He Fei wakes up strapped to a hospital bed while the unknown woman and a surgeon sign a form consenting for a lobotomy to be performed on him. After they leave, Chen Mai sneaks in disguised as a nurse. She explains that she has been framed for the murder of the photographer, and that her only goal is now to prove her own innocence by finding Muzi. Chen Mai accuses He Fei of knowing and concealing Muzi's location from her, and repeatedly demands to know the location in exchange for helping He Fei escape. He Fei finally relents and says that Muzi is at a lighthouse. Chen Mai leaves but He Fei is able to unstrap himself from the bed. He wanders through the corridors of the hospital. When he exits the hospital, he finds that it is a constructed set in the middle of an abandoned complex. He then stumbles upon a dressing room where he is confronted by Chen Mai, the unknown woman, Officer Zheng, the surgeon, and the mercenary with the shotgun. All of them are revealed to be professional actors. Moreover, the local photographer was also bribed to serve as an actor and his death was staged. The police show up and arrest He Fei. It is revealed that He Fei murdered Muzi while they were scuba diving to inherit her wealth upon discovering that Muzi was preparing to file for divorce. Chen Mai reveals herself to be Shen Man, Muzi's friend who works as the director of a theatre troupe in New York. After Muzi failed to contact her, Shen Man flew to Barlandia. Shen Man asks her troupe to join her in Barlandia to trick He Fei into divulging Muzi's location. The drowned body of Muzi is subsequently found in an underwater cage near the lighthouse. She is found with an ultrasound scan of their baby. Shen Man tells He Fei that Muzi was not going to divorce because of the pregnancy. Before Chen leaves for New York, she visits He Fei in prison and tells He Fei that by killing his wife, he also killed his child.

The movie ends with a title card explaining that He Fei is sentenced to death and executed immediately. Shen Man is sentenced to 30 days' detention for causing chaos, breaking and entering and illegal arrest. The rest of the theatre troupe is deported and barred from re-entering Barlandia.

Cast

* Zhu Yilong as He Fei
* Ni Ni as Chen Mai / Shen Man
* Janice Man as "Li Muzi" / Jane
* Du Jiang as Zheng Chen
*Kay Huang as Li Muzi

Behind-the-scenes

* In the film, when He Fei was nervous, half of his face would twitch. Zhu Yilong specially practiced muscle shaking for this purpose.
* Zhu Yilong revealed that there was a scene in the film where He Fei was shaving his head, which was shot in real life. Because the hair he was shaving was his own real hair, it had to be cut in one line, which was quite difficult to shoot.
* In order to pursue better dramatic effects, Janice Man requested to film another scene for the "bottle smashing scene"

Movie review

Through the effective connection between "text" and "discourse", the film expands the audience of crime movies to a larger group of people. It is not just young people who like brain-burning movies, but also parents and female groups who are interested in social topics. , and when you go to the theater to watch a movie, from this point of view, the film is undoubtedly a qualified commercial film that conforms to the popular cultural psychology. It gives people a sense of surprise, and therefore has achieved good box office and continuous traffic topics.

The aftertaste of the film not only leads people to discuss this artistic creation but also uses the superposition mode of suspense + reasoning + crime + emotion + human nature to try to awaken people's extension and exploration of some actual events in the limited narrative space. In the hot summer, the evil of human nature is in sharp contrast with the island's beauty. In the interweaving of romantic love and cruel reality, light and darkness, the imagery of color, light, and shadow gives the film a unique beauty. While emphasizing the creation of visual spectacles, the film also makes in-depth explorations of human nature: He Fei's transformation from "victim" to "perpetrator" is due to his inability to control his desires. Greed and selfishness are enough to drive people crazy. The experience of Li Muzi is a sign that while pursuing the true heart, people cannot give up their vigilance and examination of complex human nature. Based on the re-creation of reality, the film captures the audience's consistent aesthetics of suspense films in terms of narrative method, and its reasonable ending still gives people a soul blow. In focusing on the fate and emotions of individuals, the more important practical significance of the film is the questioning of life choices and destiny.

Release

Box office

Accolades

References

External links

*{{IMDb title, tt17507018

''Lost in the Stars''
at Douban

2022 crime films
2020s Mandarin-language films
Chinese-language films
Chinese crime films
Chinese mystery films