The title of this film from Malaysian filmmaker James Lee could easily serve as that of a grand romantic epic, or perhaps one of the Korean television dramas extolled in one scene by a travel agent as a reason for the popularity of Korea travel packages. At once melancholic and hilarious, devastatingly precise and dreamily surreal, Before We Fall In Love Again is an exhilaratingly inventive confirmation of this director’s talents, and by extension, the extraordinary fecundity of talent in current Malaysian cinema. (The producer credits are a virtual roll call of the Malaysian new wave: Amir Muhammad, Yasmin Ahmad, Tan Chui Mui, Ho Yuhang.) The film seems to reinvent itself with each scene, indeed, almost with each shot, as layers of the characters’ histories are peeled away in a continually surprising fashion.
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