Love Actually…Sucks!
Love is life, life as it is. Not every love story is a fairy tale. After a dramatic wedding feast, unusual love stories unfold towards unexpected endings. Inspired by real life cases, the film is about love that gone bad: a brother and sister in love but caught by the mother, a married painter falls for his young life drawing model of same sex, an intimacy between a dance school teacher and his rich but senior student, a lesbian couple one of which has role-play paranoid, a dreadful love triangle ending with the girl being beheaded…”Love Actually…Sucks!” celebrates love that no one care but actual. Life is love, love as it is.
Running Time: 83mins
Written, produced and directed by SCUD
Cinematography by Herman Yau/ Art Direction & Costume Design by Irving Cheung/ Music by Yu Yat Yiu / Edited by Cheung Suk Ping William & Chan Chi Wai
Main Cast
Osman Hung/ Linda So/ Haze Leung/ John Tai/ Tang Wei/ Calvin Wong/ Owen Lee/ Betty Chan/ Alice Chen/ Christepher Wee/ Sherry Li/ Shui Jie/ Celia Chang/Lareine Xu/ Jackie Chow / Winnie Leung/ Ryo van Kooten
- 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam– Official Selection and Focus Director
- 47th Chicago International Film Festival – Official Selection
- Philadelphia Q-Fest 2011 – Official Selection
Love Actually…Sucks! was Scud’s fourth film, inspired by real life cases of love gone bad and mad. It is Scud’s tribute to “Love Actually”. However it comprises 6 unblessed love stories not only glorified with romance or harmony, or that love conquers all, instead depicts the dark side of passionate love, compromised by lust, violence and death. The genuine sex scenes and an incest plot rendered the film’s released been delayed by over a year in Hong Kong and Taiwan, only possible after as many as 11 “processing”. The film premiered in Philadelphia and released in US and Europe uncut.
“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 the legendary Hong Kong cinematographer Herman Yau, Love Actually… Sucks! oscillates between myth and ghost story, 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.
– kijA”
Information Sources: IFFR 2024
More：Osman Hung / Christepher Wee / Alice Chen / Winnie Leung / Simon Tam / Ryo Van Kooten / Adrian Heung
