While a wealthy Chinese couple are celebrating their 1-year wedding anniversary with an idyllic vacation on a South-East Asian resort island, the wife unaccountably disappears. The police refuse to investigate, assuming the incident is simply a marital tiff. As the days remaining on his visa tick down, the desperate husband tries to find out what happened to his wife. Then he awakes to find lying next to him a woman he does not know who claims to be his wife.
The police quickly confirm that the woman is indeed his wife, and she explains her husband has neurological problems. Still, he remains convinced this woman is not his wife. A well-connected brilliant lady lawyer reluctantly agrees to help him.
The lawyer initially suspects the wife is trying to punish her husband over some past misdeed, but there had been earlier incidents on the island where a powerful criminal syndicate had used underhanded means to extract all the assets of wealthy visitors. Their joint investigation soon attracts dangerous unwanted attention from unknown parties, leading to the lawyer being accused of the murder of a key witness.
As Churchill noted, the truth has to be attended by a bodyguard of lies. Gradually the mystery’s layers of deception are rolled back, exposing a quasi-Shakespearian tragedy. Indeed, the English title of this 2022 movie (Lost in the Stars) may be an allusion to Shakespeare’s line about the fault being in ourselves rather than in our stars,
There are some fascinating background details, such as Asians from different cultures using English as their lingua franca. As with most movies, there has to be a certain amount of willing suspension of disbelief – but it is definitely worth watching by anyone who likes mysteries with a sting in the tail.
