Match Point and Cheating

Woody Allen's new Match Point is my starting film in this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival. Yeah. He has finally made a come-back. Since The Curse of the Jade Scorpio (I don't even remember the exact title!), I feel that he has trapped himself in a tiny nut shell of comedy and black humour. Nobody can really laugh with the lines. The films in the end are thought to be silly and pointless. Woody Allen can't be pointless! A genius can't be pointless!

Match Point is about cheating in love. I have never cheated, in exams. I am sort of proud of it. When I was teaching in St Joseph's, I saw students cheat but I did not really make a big fuss out of it. I usually signalled the cheaters that I noticed their wrongdoing, and usually they would stop. Yet, I remember once, a student went too far. I simply jotted down his name and maybe he received a penalty mark reduction. I didn't really give a shit. I did my job, he should have paid for what he did.

Yet, I cheated in love, and still do, perhaps. I ask myself: why can't I stick to one person? I can and believe me, I did. But growing up, I start to realise the difference between love and lust, love and sex, love and like. I don't love people in the way I did anymore. I gave my full self to them. I was romantic. I was passionate, and I was devoted. There's a fixed amount of energy in one's heart. So long as you have used it all up, then you become indifferent. It's just a problem of sooner or later. I used it all up many years ago. I stick to a person because of... stability? security? I guess I do so to avoid being single. Honestly, I like being in love. I enjoy this kind of lifestyle. So I move from one person to another and I receive a bad name. Bad names are everywhere. I can't care too much. Of course, I admit there are times I fucked things up. I regret, but nobody knows and I have my lessons.

People cheat because of lust. The sexual drive is too hard to suppress. There's a thing called self-control. Why do we control ourselves from what excite and motivate us? The society has many rules, which are invented by the white middle-class heterosexuals. I obey some of them and violate the rest. If we control ourselves from doing what we want, what kind of life and whose life are we living? No one can guarantee our days will turn better when we obey those rules. Fates are just organic. They evolve on their own. They don't need any rules to show the way out. Most of us let our dicks think too much.

Woody Allen once said: "The brain is a man's second favorite organ." I guess this explains why we all cheat.

We cheat because we all love ourselves most. Admit it. I do.