4 Star

Love Can be Very Twisty.

Directors Rui Cui with his first feature and Xiang Liu (Bu su lai ke) with his second feature, bring us an edge of the seat mystery that will have you bewildered and fascinated in equal measures until the final reveal. In this riveting love story, you will be mesmerized by the flawed main character, as he goes into a downward spiral of despair due to his missing wife. Lost in the Stars is a cracking mystery story, with a finale you did not expect. You will have your suspicions, but you will have to wait for the big reveal.

A busy SouthEast Asian police station is suddenly interrupted by the frantic callings of He Fei (Yilong Zhu, Lighting up the Stars, 1921), a man frantic because his wife has been missing for fifteen days, but the police don’t do domestic disputes, especially at peak tourism time. They need proof of a crime. After being rebuffed, he stares at the bulletin board outside the police station, with all its missing person posters. He does not see his wife’s face, he claws at it in desperation. But a lifeline is handed to him as police officer Zheng Cheng (Jiang Du, My People, My Country, The Bravest) offers to help him, but He has only five days left on his visa.

Things take a one-hundred and eighty-degree turn the next morning when he wakes to find a woman sleeping next to him. Confused he asks who she is? Stunned, she says, don’t be silly He, I’m Li Muzi (Janice Man, Cold War II, New Kung Fu Cult Master) your wife. This sends He into a fit, he suffers from a neurological condition due to his time spent as a deep sea diver.

He phones Zheng and tries to get him to believe this woman is not his wife and that she is an imposter, but all the evidence points to the contrary. He cannot remonstrate enough, but everybody agrees Li is his wife.

When he gets some time on his own, he has a beer in Chris’ (Scotty Bob Cox, The Wandering Earth II) bar and sees on the telly attorney at law Chen Ma (Ni Ni, The Flowers of War, Shockwave 2), a lawyer who has never lost a case. This gives He hope so he goes to see her, to try and convince her to take his case and find the proof of his missing wife and the imposter that has usurped her position in his life.

Now the fun begins as we try to figure out how this fake wife has infiltrated his life, while they hit blind alley after blind alley. Lost in the Stars will keep you on tenterhooks for the whole two hours of this mystery thriller.

Lost in the Stars is in Cinema’s Now