Synopsis
Two former lovers find themselves irresistibly drawn back together — despite the fact that each of them is engaged to someone else.
Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2
2014 ‘單身男女2’ Directed by Johnnie To
Director
Producers
Writers
Cinematography
Studios
Milkyway Image Company Beijing Hairun Pictures Company Media Asia Film Production Limited Wanda Film and Television Media Co.,Ltd.
Countries
Original Language
Spoken Languages
Alternative Titles
Don't Go Breaking My Heart II, Dan sun nam nui 2, 单身男女2
Popular reviews
More-
The first film love is a business transaction metaphor pushed up to an extreme: when all romantic options are ultimately so exchangeable, they are also meaningless until a heartbreaking final shot recalibrates the costs of all the weightless romantic gestures we've seen until then. This has flaws most of them dramatic (Wai hall of mirrors structure is at his self-conscious worst, Wu's absence does make things unbalanced and so on), but its mix of charm and dark vision is remarkable. This might be To’s most nihilistic film since the early Milkyway thrillers while also keeping the screwball endearing quality of the original, a mix of horror and zaniness worthy of Bringing Up Baby. Love is a matter of engineering, a…
-
I can't recall any other sequel that completely dismantles the mythos of the previous film quite so strongly since Gremlins 2. DGBMH2 is a vicious picture. There's still romance, but unlike the previous film the idea of competition completely overwhelms the characters as others feelings get trampled on, and left to wilt and suffer behind a bottle of alcohol. The same tools that To presented in the first picture are here, like the camera phone recording of songs, and windowsill text messaging via post it notes, but it is muted to a point that it all rings hollow as To embraces the game instead of the feelings behind love. The romantic comedy genre balances a tricky line between protecting the…
-
The sequel builds on the first film in several ingenious ways, doubling and inverting just about everything from its predecessor. More romantic than comic, if the first film had a flaw, it was that it was so sweetly, almost innocently joyous in its cuteness. Koo and Wu chase after Gao with increasingly implausible displays of charm and conspicuous consumption, the luxury world the characters inhabit blissfully untouched by the economic catastrophe of 2008 that launches the film's plot (as such, it is a companion piece to To's other film from 2011, Life Without Principle which looks explicitly at the fallout from the collapse from the perspective of a cop, a gangster and a low-level banker). The sequel raises the price…
-
If the 2011 film is the greatest romantic film made in recent times (which it is), then this to me is the To-Wai team's great anti-romance. Which is not to say that there aren't great romantic moments here... there are of course and they set the heart aflutter and everything. But most of the time the film is skewering those moments soon after. Those post-it note correspondences that endeared Louis Koo so much to us as well as Gao in the first movie have devolved into a pickup artist's lame formula. The grandiose skyscraper is now a prolonged construction project keeping the couple apart. And signs and coincidences are often deflated of meaning.. Louis Koo feeling breathless again ultimately means…
-
a deeply vile film. the first don't go breaking my heart envisioned sexual politics as functioning like modern finance, with fluctuations in the market ultimately according with the shifting emotional turmoil in relationships, but that film still had a belief in destiny: that happy endings could exist, that economic growth would overall continue into infinity, that true love would triumph over all. this second entry says 'fuck you' to all of that. markets crash, no one is loyal to each other, all the relationships crumble. johnnie to goes out of his way here to show how the fun light-hearted antics of the first movie masked an incredibly superficial and cutthroat ideology at work underneath the romance. when your idea of…
-
-
to tops the ending of shopaholics in terms of pure escalating comic action, louis koo nears election 2 levels of mania. he builds her a skyscraper you climb that skyscraper.
danny wu turns back to the bottle, lam suet runs up the stairs forever. miriam keeps trying to park that car.
"terminate the lease."
-
-
Love in the time of the stock market, you are guided by appearances, by speculation, always ready to change stocks if a more flashy option turns your way, everything is a transaction - 'I move your car, you buy me dinner', 'I have competition too' - a graciously paced, miraculously witty film, many infinitely affecting love gestures coalescing into an urban operetta. Climbing a skyscraper built by your competitor is the new way to prove your aptitude in the love market.
-
A theory:
Don't Go Breaking My Heart = Act One of Into the Woods
Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 = Act Two of Into the Woods -
from transactional love to cynical defeatism; “why so cruel?” a sequel that dissects the thematic core of its predecessor and entirely recontextualizes the characters. to draws plenty of parallels but builds something entirely new to substantiate a second entry that’s just as great (if not better). the octopus is a definite step down from the frog, though.
-
There's a recurring joke here that involves one character telling another that he seems familiar, and that they must've met before. The joke is that they haven't, but in a sense, they might as well have—they're two would-be romantics caught in the middle of another (the best, in fact) Johnnie To deconstructionist rom-com, and they're seemingly reprising the roles of two principles from the first "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." It's in this exchange that To furthers his efforts to—especially in this last peak decade of his career thus far—craft a thematic vision for his cinema that's as reflexive as his formalism, one primarily focused on the concept of his characters inhabiting and subverting their own roles and each others'.…
