"The Story of 90 Coins" is a 9.5-minute live action short film from China that received a solid deal of awards recognition recently. It was directed by Michael Wong and written by Bai Xuedan and unless you are fluent in Chinese, you will need subtitles for this one. It is the story of a couple who apparently go through a rough time, but I cannot say that I felt it was too authentic. Or authentic at all. The filmmaker's ambition to come up with something artistically relevant was clearly visible from start to finish, but the execution felt pretty poor to me. Because the story and many other aspects, especially the schmaltzy dialogues, had very little to do with realism and authentic story-telling. The fact that the entire thing is in voice-overs is not helping either, but yeah the main problem here is what the two say. Also the story did not really make any sense and it felt all just for the dramatic sake of it just like the over-emotional ending or the constant mention of Paris as the most desirable place to be. I would not say it is a failure taking into account that the duo who made this film had not any movie-making experience previously, but I wish that for future projects, they will go a bit more for convincing subtlety.
Review of The Story of 90 Coins
