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Edmund Lee

1.5/5 stars
A high-concept fantasy romance set in a human world that has been physically split into two, Measure in Love asks its audience to succumb to the supposedly poetic swooning of its star-crossed lovers – only to make it a very tall order indeed with a criminally underdeveloped set-up and an unfathomably illogical plot.
Marking the feature debut of experienced Hong Kong assistant director Benny Kung Siu-ping, this dystopian fairy tale co-scripted by Kung, producer Sylvia Chang Ai-chia (whose Love Education he worked on) and Bernyce Li Pak-kiu imagines a “gravity wall” separating humanity across two sides of the ocean – flat earth conspiracy theorists rejoice!
On one side of the divide is the Aurora zone, a prosperous and spotless metropolis where our protagonist, the trainee doctor Ann-Jean (Angela Yuen Lai-lam, The Narrow Road), lives. Its counterpart is the Evergreen zone, a barren police state lacking many of life’s essentials.


In a premise that evokes the inhuman impact of capitalism but says nothing meaningful about it, we are told that Evergreen has a weaker gravitational pull and a bizarrely condensed notion of time: one day in Aurora equals one year in Evergreen, a quirk the film all too fleetingly explains makes it a great place to set up factories.
During one of her clandestine trips into Evergreen with White Doves, a small team of humanitarian aid workers, Ann-Jean meets Tato, a 13-year-old petty thief who is instantly smitten. She also falls for him in just a few of her days – and many of his years – as he grows into a man (Greg Hsu Kuang-han, Marry My Dead Body).
What unfolds is essentially an old-fashioned “conflict zone” romance, with a privileged doctor from the developed world falling for a resilient survivor. Measure in Love attempts to distinguish itself with fantasy trappings, only to smother the love story under a web of half-baked ideas that render it emotionally inert.
For a narrative so focused on the struggle to obtain medical supplies, it somehow never occurs to anyone that the White Doves team could bring some with them. And what of the purported heartbreak of being separated by “two different times” when the couple could presumably just choose to live in the same zone?

Yuen and Hsu make an attractive screen couple and Man Lim-chung’s art design does a wonderful job of transporting the viewers into the wasteland of Evergreen. It is just a shame Measure in Love makes so little effort to be logical that only the biggest fans of its two leads are likely to merrily sit through the resulting piece of lyrical nonsense.
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Benny Kung’s dystopian fairy tale in which humanity is separated across two sides of the ocean looks good but leaves basic logic far behind


Benny Kung’s dystopian fairy tale in which humanity is separated across two sides of the ocean looks good but leaves basic logic far behind.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Benny Kung’s dystopian fairy tale in which humanity is separated across two sides of the ocean looks good but leaves basic logic far behind

Benny Kung’s dystopian fairy tale in which humanity is separated across two sides of the ocean looks good but leaves basic logic far behind