Crass humorists sometimes joke about the cleverness with which Asian workers crank out exact counterfeits of American products. The covert intent of such jokes is to insinuate that Asians are incapable of creative thought and invention, so they compensate for their intellectual shortcoming by being expert mimics and copycats. Loathsome though it is, perhaps there is a tiny grain of truth in this vile racist stereotype. In SO CLOSE TO PARADISE Wang Xiaoshuai almost out-Hollywoods Hollywood by embedding a classic Hollywood love story in a classic Hollywood gangster flick, then coaxing from his cast acting performances that are sentimental, emotive, and grandly expressive in the classic Hollywood fashion.

The three main characters (it's a love triangle, naturally) are familiar types from classic Hollywood films of the 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's. We have Dong Zi, a morally upright, painfully shy country boy who's frightened and confused by the big city, Gao Ping, a bold, foolish country boy who takes up a life of crime in the big city, and Ruan Hong, an innocent Vietnamese country girl who goes astray in the big city and becomes a sultry nightclub singer and a whore with a heart of gold. Among the secondary characters, the nagging landlady also has a heart of gold, but the brutal crime boss does not.

In classic Hollywood films, star power is everything. Guo Tao lacks star power. His portrayal of Gao Ping is flat and unconvincing.  But Shi Yu as Dong Zi and Wang Tong as Ruan Hong give audience-winning performances in their feature-film debuts. The characters they play are complete opposites, and our two stars go to extravagant lengths to show the contrast. Shi Yu edges through the film, a nervous and ridiculously awkward bumpkin, a geeky farmboy nerd, fretting and frowning with indecision before daring to try a new experience.  In one scene he notices a hot-air hand dryer in a public men's room, peers at it to figure out its purpose, then hesitantly touches it. When his hand moves under the sensor, the dryer comes on with a loud roar, and he flees in terror. By contrast, Wang Tong glides across the screen, sinuous, svelte, smooth, sophisticated, and seductive.  Cooing torch songs into the microphone in the nightclub, her hair backlit like a halo, she's an archetype of angelically gorgeous, vulnerable sexuality. When she realizes a man is following her down a dark street late at night, she whirls around, sassily snaps her bubblegum, then stares him down with the aloof disdain of a Hollywood diva.  

In classic Hollywood films, the storyline can be a house of cards built entirely out of coincidences and improbabilities as long as it succeeds in getting the audience to identify with the characters and care about their feelings. In exactly the same spirit, Wang Xiaoshuai sacrifices realism and believability, contriving a highly artificial plot in order to showcase the inner sweetness of Dong Zi and Ruan Hong. He seduces us into adoring them and cheering for them so we'll suffer exquisite emotional torment when we realize that although they love each other deeply and profoundly, neither dares to reveal that love to the other.

I'm a clumsy critic. The first four paragraphs of this review make SO CLOSE TO PARADISE sound dreadfully corny, but really it isn't. It's artfully corny.  Cinematographer Yang Tao and art director Cheng Guangming have given us one expertly composed, richly colored camera shot after another, with several scenes done entirely in tints of red, several others entirely in tints of blue, and many stark contrasts between the faux opulence of the nightclub where Ruan Hong sings and the dilapidated slum apartment where Dong Zi and Gao Ping live. Liu Lin's musical score is varied, intelligent, and atmospheric. And the masterful editing of Liu Fang and Yang Hong Yu features a rhythmic alternation of slowly paced scenes and briskly paced scenes, sudden cuts that make us jump in our seats, and then, at the very end, an astonishing freeze frame that conveys worlds of emotional meaning in a split second. The concentrated payload of joyous release in this freeze frame is so unexpected and so dramatically strong that I'm tempted to say it makes the film.