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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Gay > The Map Of Sex & Love

The Map Of Sex & Love

 

Picture: C     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Main Program: C+

 

 

A young Chinese/American videomaker goes to Hong Kong to make a documentary about a new theme park opening, but gets involved instead with a young woman still not right from a Belgrade visit and a gay male dancer he starts to fall for in Evan Chan’s The Map Of Sex & Love (2001).  Like David Searching (reviewed elsewhere on this site), the gay main character is trying to express himself through moving images, but this project gets too stuck on that idea, something that seems to get dragged out because it is on video and video seems to make potential filmmakers lazy and bankrupt of ideas all of the sudden in general.

 

As a matter of fact, every prefabricated slow motion and delayed motion feature a camera like that can offer is used in the most pointless ways.  I never bought the drama, the love scenes are badly stylized and the lack of explicitness gives the whole program an added phoniness to all the not-so-clever camera tricks that anyone who reads the DV cam manual could do.  The result is a bizarre 132 minutes(!) that is as interesting for its location shooting in Hong Kong as any storyline.

 

The 1.33 X 1 videotaped image is on the soft side with color and detail limits, which is to be expected from such taping on what is likely, the DV format at 480i.  The result is mixed playback.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has music added to the location audio and even has Pro Logic surrounds.  The only extra are three abstract pieces dubbed Music Videos, which make less sense than the feature.  Maybe this is some acquired taste, so only the most curious should apply.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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