Ai Hen Lan

Even if in Love Actually... Sucks! Scud interlaces stories of love and relationships, it becomes immediately apparent that this film bears no easy relationship to Richard Curtis' 2003 film. As is made clear by the lashings of nudity and sex and a guy wandering along the coast, carrying his lover’s decapitated head. Inspired by six real-life court cases in Hong Kong, the film is a unique existential romance about love that has gone bad, illustrating how love can kind of suck, whilst giving a toast to unconventional love too. Siblings express their mutual love a little too affectionately, a wedding is spoiled, a married painter has a crush on his male model, a dance school teacher dances more than tango with his student, a lesbian couple have a role-playing issue and an unlucky love triangle ends with death and decapitation. The second of two collaborations with Hong Kong Herman Yau as the cinematographer, Love Actually… Sucks! oscillates between "Decameron" and "Kaidan", mixing erotica with crime. While the film and love, are to be taken seriously, Scud’s insistence on keeping it real, his candour and his uncanny eye for singular imagery crackles with unexpected humour. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)