‘Lost In The Stars’: Review

Dirs: Cui Rui, Liu Xiang. China. 2023. 121mins

Chen Sicheng is primarily known as the writer-director of the blockbuster Detective Chinatown franchise, but he has also been developing a tidy sideline producing remakes of crime-orientated fare from various territories for the Chinese market. The Indian Malayalam-language thriller Drishyam (2013) became Sheep Without A Shepherd (2020), then the Denzel Washington vehicle John Q (2002) served as the template for Fireflies In The Sun (2021). Now the source material is the Soviet mystery A Trap For A Lonely Man (1990), with screenwriters Chen and Gu Shuyi taking its missing person premise as a jumping off point and co-directors Cui Rui and Liu Xiang capably applying the souped-up style that is now de rigueur for China’s commercial potboilers. The result is not as tightly wound as its predecessors, and has an unfortunate tendency to telegraph its big twists, but Lost In The Stars nonetheless manages to hold attention for most of its running time.

Delivers the goods as the kind of time-waster which is thoroughly preposterous, but no less enjoyable for it.

Receiving its domestic release during the Dragon Boat festival, the film should open comfortably ahead of the competition based on Chen’s reputation as a purveyor of crafty suspensers. Like Chen’s previous remakes, it’s set in sweltering Southeast Asia and paced in propulsive fashion – although here the family-minded protagonists who grounded the frequent plot swerves of its predecessors are swapped for an altogether sketchier type, who is less easy to root for. As such, it will likely perform well enough to keep Chen’s remake business ticking over, but may not reach the box office heights of Sheep Without A Shepherd or Fireflies In The Sun which tallied $199 million and $176 million respectively. Although scheduled for a limited international theatrical run in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in July from CMC Pictures, this slickly designed puzzle is most likely to catch the eyes of overseas viewers as a streaming option.

When we first encounter panicked tourist He Fei (Zhu Yilong), he is trying to persuade the local police to open a case on his wife Li Muzi (Janice Man), who has vanished without a trace while celebrating their first wedding anniversary in a beachside resort. With only a few days remaining on his visa, He Fei awakens next to an unfamiliar woman who claims to be Li Muzi and even has the ID card to prove it. He Fei insists that she is an imposter, but the police determine that he is suffering from a delusion as a side effect of the medication he has been prescribed for a neurological condition.

At his wits end, He Fei turns to resourceful lawyer Chen Mai (Ni Ni), who has never lost a case and boasts street smarts to match her legal prowess. Their investigation initially points to Li Muzi having been abducted by a trafficking organization which seemingly has most of the resort on its payroll. It gradually becomes apparent, however, that the reason for her disappearance may lie in He Fei’s past.

As far as films about missing spouses go, Lost In The Stars may not rival Roman Polanski’s Frantic (1988) for clockwork precision, but still works itself into a veritable lather as He Fei and Chen Mai endeavour to establish a web of nefarious activity. To this end, Cui and Liu get considerable mileage out of the tropical setting. The sun-kissed beaches, gaudy bars, carnival-filled streets and the opulent hotel where the couple have been staying are effectively shot by cinematographer He Shan to create a sense of trouble lurking in paradise (although the clichéd use of a lighthouse as a signifier somewhat over-eggs the exotic pudding).

Aside from a choppy backroads car chase, which seems to have been assembled to conceal the lack of any genuine high-speed action, it’s sharply edited by Tang Hongjia who integrates extensive flashbacks to He Fei’s courtship of Li Muzi without lessening the tempo of the time-sensitive mystery.

A strong cast largely sells the far-fetched proceedings. Following success in television, Zhu has recently proven his big screen presence with Cloudy Mountain (2021), Embrace Again (2021) and the acclaimed Cannes selection Only The River Flows (2023). Here, he pulls off a tricky high wire act as an everyman under extreme duress, whose propensity for wildly flying off the handle is at once forgivable and an indication that something else may be amiss. Ni has sufficient poise to make her improbably cool lawyer just about credible, while Man’s wistful performance as the imperilled wife is pointedly contrasted by Kay Huang’s playfully wicked turn as her more assertive ‘replacement’.

It’s a shame that Lost In The Stars does not settle for being a piece of high-end pulp. Instead, it awkwardly strains for deeper resonance through allusions to Van Gogh’s abstract landscape painting ’The Starry Night’ which becomes a key plot device and visual motif. Despite over-stretching in the third act, however, it delivers the goods as the kind of time-waster which is thoroughly preposterous, but no less enjoyable for it.