Being a female film, 20/30/40 starts from a female angle to look at life at different stages of age. The stories of Rene Liu and Sylvia Chang are indeed quite stereotype and traditional. Liu, because of lack of confidence in man and marriage under the influence of her mother, has a wild love and sex life. Chang has divorced after finding her husband having an affair and crazily look for a new companion but finally in vain. The magic of the film comes from the director catering to the inner feeling of characters, their thoughts and the actors' superb acting performance.
There are two scenes very touching. One is when Chang doing volunteer work in the hospital she said life is a passage where people around you keep leaving you. It's a bitter monologue but then she said to the patient `if people don't leave me, how can I take care of you now?' The heavy tone is simply turned into an easy laughing mood. It's touching but not emotional.
The other one is when Liu finally has settled down with the man who bought her piano. Liu was sitting in front of the piano with the man's daughter who was playing a song; the man's hand touched her daughter and then moved to the shoulders of Liu. The audiences see only the man's hands touching Liu; yet at the same time feel his heart touching Liu too. The warm feeling coming from Liu's face is such a contrast compared with the previous Liu in love or sex with the other guys.
The story of Li Sin Je is a more brave trial. The relationship she has with the other girl is for audience a fresh experience. It's pure, sensational yet sexually related, a test about the extent of love. The director has dealt with it in a very sensible way giving the characters high spiritual innocence and visually no faulty behaviour. I've seen an interview with the director where she said she believed this kind of friendship exists in a lot of cases between two close teenage girls but it's not lesbian love. I would prefer to say she's given a space in the film for audiences to decide what they think this relationship between the two girls is than having defined it. No matter what one might think, he can't deny it's so pure and innocent.
The blending of the three stories deserves a high credit to the director and is one of the successes. Without this, the film wouldn't have been so profound in content. The characters of the three stories are so close together even though they don't know each other in the film.
The ending is the 3 females, though after very tough period of trial in catching what they aim for, have all failed (Liu also failed because she'd been looking for passion, not settle down). They fail but they don't regret, still brave to face their future and accept what has happened to them a part of their lives. Destiny only chooses what to happen to them but can't decide for them what they should do and go for. They still choose their own ways. They look like loser; actually they are winner.
It's such a great film and we should not simply regard it as a female film because the extent it covers and message it has conveyed is certainly beyond female world. A man like me watched it with little tears wetting my eyes.
