LUNCH WITH CHARLES (2001)
Ching Wan Lau (billed here as Sean Lau) makes a credible English language debut with this romantic comedy coproduced by Canada and Hong Kong. Lau plays Tong, a Hong Kong realtor who is an aspiring songwriter. He’d love to be the one singing the songs too, but as per Tong he’s not pretty enough for the job. For the last three years his wife April (Theresa Lee, Lau’s BIG BULLET costar) has been living in Vancouver and working for a PR firm. She’s been pleading with Tong to join her, but he feels his limited English will likely mean the only work he’ll find is washing dishes in a restaurant. April is constantly being encouraged by her colleague Cora (Francoise Yip) to force the issue: get Tong here or move on. She does so by sending her wedding band in a courier envelope and alluding she’s embarking on an affair. When Tong calls Cora tells him April is “having lunch with Charles”, the sleazy booking agent she is working with.
April’s PR firm has just landed a potentially lucrative contact for an Irish brewery. The manager for Canada, Tom (Tom Scholte) is sexist, racist, and pretty boorish. He’s not happy that a Chinese PR firm is handling the account, but that’s beyond his call. The brewery is sponsoring a music festival in Banff, Alberta, where a Celtic band called Finnegan’s Take will be performing. The lead singer has just quit, and April is sent on the road to help fix the problem.
Meanwhile Tong has flown to Vancouver and hopped a bus to Banff, but is left behind in the town of Princeton during a rest stop. He is put up for the night at the bed & breakfast of a dysfunctional young couple, Matthew (X FILES’ Nicholas Lea) and Natasha (rock singer Bif Naked). Unknown to him, April is staying at the same bed & breakfast. A fight divides Matthew and Natasha; she used to sing for Finnegan’s Take and has been encouraged to step in. She leaves, ostensibly for Banff, in the middle of the night, with Tong riding along in hopes of finding his wife. Meanwhile, April finds Matthew joining her when she leaves, chasing after his girlfriend.
The couples continually miss one another and are unaware of it, with unforeseen detours on the road to Banff forcing each person to examine the nature of their relationships as well as their own strengths & weaknesses. All four will eventually meet up, but the results are unexpected.
LUNCH WITH CHARLES blends elements of screwball comedy with the road trip genre, and beyond being simply a comedy of errors attempts to explore the cultural diversity among its central characters. Writer – director Michael Parker orchestrates this quite well, achieving a number of nice comic moments. Even if it’s not a film of great substance it is successfully charming. The bulk of the film takes place in British Columbia, with opening and closing segments shot in Hong Kong.
Lau (who has one of the great faces in movies today) is the film’s ace, and despite his character’s proclamation that “my English is lousy”, the reality is far from it. Lau is every bit as strong as numerous contemporaries who have been working in English language films are. This film showcases his solid comic abilities. He scowls & chain-smokes his way across British Columbia as he both tries to understand a new environment (not unlike Bill Murray in LOST IN TRANSLATION, though the characters and films are of course radically different) and figure out his relationship with April. The majority of his scenes are played with Bif Naked. The heavily tattooed singer has a pleasing screen presence even if her performance isn’t strong enough to match the work done by Lau. They play well together as her free spirit begins exposing hidden layers to Tong’s character. Bif gets to sing, and yes, she gets to be naked as well during an impromptu moment of skinny-dipping.
Theresa Lee is good as April; it’s something of a subdued performance but she does show sharp comic timing, and again, in her pairing with Nicholas Lea (who was co-executive producer of LUNCH) the duo work quite well together. Lea is better known for his villainous work as Krycek on THE X-FILES so this marks a most pleasing change of pace for him. The scenes between April and Matthew work better when compared with the film’s other pairings thanks to the strengths of the actors themselves.
The movie periodically switches back to Francoise Yip and Tom Scholte. He’s not terribly convincing as an Irishman, and the character isn’t very likeable. Yip is fine; she’s the western influence spurring April on to force Tong’s hand.
The lovely photography is by John Houtman, and the music score is by Simon Kendall (of the pop band Doug & The Slugs), who also appears as a member of Finnegan’s Take. LUNCH WITH CHARLES is an enjoyable little movie, well worth seeing for the performance