Turn Left Turn Right

" TURN LEFT TURN RIGHT" 

The story is based on the illustrated book A Chance of Sunshine by Taiwanese author Jimmy Liao, who makes a cameo appearance with his wife and daughter in the film. It is also the first Chinese Language Asian film ever from produced and distributed by Warner Bros. 

The original graphic novel was first published in 1999. The characters in the novel were not given names, both characters were only refereed to as "him" and "her". Chinese title of the book translates to "Turn Left, Turn Right", A Chance of Sunshine is the original English title of the book, on the newer published editions the English title is shown as "Turn Left, Turn Right". The book consists of a series of detailed illustrated images, with a small amount of text in poetry style. The film has managed to include every single image in the book with a high level of accuracy, although some are fleeting.

“Turn Left, Turn Right” is a delightful though conventional romantic comedy that fits the talents and appearances of its two stars perfectly. Gigi Leung and Kaneshiro Takeshi are so beautiful that we know they will wind up together at the end of the movie no matter what temporary obstacles the filmmakers throw in their way. Their physical beauty is played for all it is worth by cinematographers To Hung-Mo and Cheng Siu-Keung—they are always lit and framed perfectly. The entire technical team did a wonderful job with “Turn Left, Turn Right”: the set designer created adjoining apartments with a shared wall that allowed both stars to be in the same frame although separated from each other; the make-up people made Leung and Kaneshiro look ill—but still devastating—for much of the movie; the editing was spot on, particularly the cross-cutting between the two of them while their apartments or to underline how they were thinking of each other. Both John Liu and Eve Choi perform and interpret highly charged romantic European art—he is a violinist whose favorite piece is Edward Elgar’s “Six Very Easy Pieces” even though he makes his living playing in a restaurant, she translates German horror fiction into Chinese but wants to translate the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska whose work, at least the few lines presented here, sounds like it came straight from the nineteenth century. Both want to leave Taipei—actually leave Asian completely. He wants to play for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra while she realizes that she must move to New York City for her  literary career to flourish.