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Comfort
USA 2016
produced by Mark Heidelberger for Late to the Party Productions
directed by William Lu
starring Chris Dinh, Julie Zhan, Kelvin Han Yee, Billy 'Sly' Williams, Michael Bow, Kevin Ashworth, Michael Boucher, Stephen DeCordova, Brett Jacobsen, Josh Murphy, Shawn Cahill, Vivian Tu, Erika Heidelberger (as Erika C. Perez), Franco Dias, Erik Martinez, Rosalyn Kawahira, Feodor Chin, Jolene Kim, Mark Heidelberger
written by William Lu, music by Scott Gilman
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Cameron (Chris Dinh) is a financially challenged courier who can only
work night shifts because of an obscure skin condition that makes him
allergic to daylight and who wants to one day become chef of his own food
truck. Jasmine (Julie Zhan) is the slightly spoilt daughter of a wealthy
businessman, Martin (Kelvin Han Yee), who has only come to town for a
stopover to see her dad before moving to Japan. On first sight, Cameron
and Jasmine have little in common, but when Martin can't make it to pick
Jasmine up from the airport, he asks Cameron, his favourite courier to
help out, which Cameron gladly agrees to ... and after a bumpy start,
Cameron and Jasmine become friends actually, so much so that she, after
Martin postpones meeting her time and again, calls Cameron to hang out
with her, and especially when she hears about his skin condition, she
starts to feel for him. Thing is, while Martin makes a mess out of showing
Jasmine that he cares for her, he actually does care for her a lot, and
he's not too happy about her hanging out with a lowly courier ... Now
one can't but notice the similarities between this movie and Before
Sunrise, what with both movies showing love very slowly blooming over
a very limited span of time (though it's two nights in the case of Comfort),
the night theme as such, and the ever changing locations picked up all
over town (LA here, Vienna, Austria in Before Sunrise though) - but
that said, Comfort is by no means derivative, for one it's clearer
structured, narratively, plus it does afford itself more featured
characters whose subplots are woven into the main story quite beautifully.
And taken on its own merits, Comfort is a pretty charming movie, it
develops its story in a very relaxed but palpable way, relies on a very
subtle and light-footed directorial effort and is carried by a likeable
pair of leads. In fact, a nice dating movie even for those who don't like
dating movies.
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