At first glance, Arvin Chen’s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? looks like another, largely inoffensive saccharine comedy/melodrama that characterises so much of commercial Taiwanese film. The family of Weichung (Richie Jen), his wife of nine years, Feng (Mavis Fan), and their six-year-old son live a tranquil existence in middle class, semi-urban Taipei. The only sign of potential turbulence is Weichung’s grumpily indecisive sister Mandy (Kimi Hsia), who even at her pre-marriage family banquet seems already disgruntled with her sullen husband-to-be San-san (Stone, lead guitarist with Taiwanese rockers, Mayday). Life looks set to become even more blissful when Weichung’s retiring boss anoints him as a successor to the optometry store. This happy scene ends with the boss using his umbrella to float skyward like Mary Poppins, and so it indeed appears that whimsy will be the film’s dominant mode.
Finely observed and averse to hysteria
Even when disruption comes, it initially appears sweet enough: A smiling handsome Hong Kong air steward (Ka Lok Wong) peeks into Weichung’s shop window and catches the happily married man’s eye. This brief and innocuous exchange revives Weichung’s long dormant (pre-marriage) homosexual desires and instigates a series of events that creates a maelstrom in everyone’s lives.
While the film maintains its sense of humour throughout, writer/director Arvin Chen takes care to keep his nerve in terms of the tough questions of sexuality and commitment and identity. Instead of Mandy and San-san’s rocky romance being the source of tension, it largely provides comic relief to Weichung’s internal dilemma.
Finely observed and averse to hysteria, the script superbly externalises the inner conflicts of all the characters. Richie Jen puts his leading man physique aside by donning a prosthetic pot belly and giving a restrained performance that communicates the challenge of living with suppressed emotions. Jen’s body language gives the impression of someone holding something back and expresses the angst of discovering that in choosing a wife (that he has grown to love) and starting a family (which he still treasures) that he has also lied to himself.
In a potentially thankless role as the trusting, 'betrayed’ wife, Mavis Fan is excellent. Maintaining a consistent persona despite her own character’s changes, Fan delivers the emotional goods in a wide range of scenes. Fan also gets the film’s most outlandish moment. As the drama escalates, Feng gets drunk at a karaoke bar with her office colleagues. Unable to talk to anyone about her suspicions about her husband, Feng makes the self-pitying selection of The Shirelles’ song that is the film’s namesake. In an audacious gambit, Chen segues from the realistic karaoke scene into a girl group performance with Feng as lead singer. It’s a double-edged moment that not only brings a smile to the lips, but also sharply heightens the heartbreaking poignancy of the song while spotlighting Feng’s secret emotional distress.
Even with this stylistic detour (the only justification for the inclusion of the earlier, wacky Mary Poppins moment), Chen’s film ultimately stays true to the feelings experienced by its characters, refusing to compromise, and bravely resolving the drama. There’s certainly a spoonful of sugar here, but this movie is too smart and too honest to pretend that life doesn’t hold some bitterness.
