Why is the movie "Love in Heaven" starring Andy Lau so highly rated on Douban?

There are three parts of "Heavenly Love", but the first one is the most touching. The Douban score is 8.1, which is also the highest among the trilogy.

The first time I saw this movie was at a classmate’s house (on a rented DVD). The three of us burst into tears after seeing it. We were only seventeen or eighteen years old at that time, and it was the beginning of our love affair. His age is as old as Jojo's in the film.

We don’t know much about Jojo’s life as a rich girl, but we can feel Jojo’s pure and fierce love. We don’t know much about the bloody world, but we can feel the place where Andy is in the film. The environment is so overwhelming.

It may be that you have to grow older before you can better understand the meaning of this film. Some of the details that we ignored back then have new pain points when we watch it now.

For example, the dragon and phoenix pillows given to Jojo by Andy’s grandfather carry the young couple’s expectations for love. After all, Andy’s grandfather is the only relative whom Andy can fully trust, so this pair of pillows also comes from Approval from “official elders”. The cotton stuffing inside was also made by the young couple and their grandfather. However, these extremely important pillows were later torn to pieces by Sir Jiang who came with JoJo's mother.

The messy cotton wool on the ground indicates that the love between Jojo and Andy is destined not to have a happy ending.

Andy Lau has been in the industry for decades, and apart from the "Dragon in the River", the most memorable movie is "Heavenly Love". He performed the fearlessness of a low-level gangster, and the hesitation and determination after encountering love.

Jojo, played by Wu Qianlian, has an almost devout belief in love. As a rich girl, she is willing to come to the smoky environment where Andy lives and witness with her own eyes three old prostitutes (Huazi's adoptive mother). The neighbor who came to ask for sex was so frightened by Andy's speeding that his face was deformed. This world was completely different from what she had experienced in the previous ten years, but she followed Andy wholeheartedly.

Even escaped with him to his grandpa in Macau. The time in Macau was the happiest and most carefree time for both of them!

The scene when Andy and Jojo smashed open the shop window, stole a wedding dress, and took her to the church probably made countless people cry. He faced the wind with a nosebleed, and she leaned behind him with a firm look on her face. This was the last happy time for the two of them.

In an instant, on this side of the camera, Andy was lying silently in a pool of blood. On the other side of the camera, she found the dawn from the dark night, running on the viaduct holding the hem of her wedding dress...

It is worth mentioning the performance of Ng Mang-tat, who we often call a wretched professional, in this film.

The characters he plays have always been labeled as "timid", "vulgar" and "marketplace" in the audience's impression. In this film, he still has such labels, but the only difference is that However, in the last battle, when he saw Hua Zai grabbing Xiao Xiao's arms in a desperate situation, he resolutely rushed over with a dagger and pierced Xiao Xiao's back.

Seeing that he had finally completed the step he had never dared to take, he completely ignored the wound on his abdomen and shouted with a smile: I succeeded!

This is a counterattack for a small person, and it is also a counterattack for Wu Mengta's film career. For this humble role, he won his only Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor!

In addition to the wonderful performances of the actors, the interludes and theme songs of this film are also a rare collection of elites in Hong Kong films. "If There's Love" made Yuan Fengying famous, and was later covered and adapted into the Mandarin version of "Dream Chaser" by Feng Feifei. The three interludes were also sung by Huang Jiaju and Huang Guanzhong respectively.

This film is Chen Musheng's directorial debut and Wu Qianlian's film debut. Johnnie To only appears as a producer. Many scenes in the film were used for reference in many subsequent works, such as wearing a wedding dress and riding a motorcycle, smashing a window to steal a wedding dress, etc.

Although this film was only nominated for the Academy Awards, it always occupies a place in the memories of Hong Kong's golden age. It not only explains love, but also represents the conflicts between social classes that were common in that era. It deserves such a high score.