Mo gui tian shi

DEVIL ANGEL is a Taiwanese Category III romance film with touches of the thriller genre to it. It's about a young couple who fall in love, but financial struggles complicate things when the guy has to resort to becoming a gigolo in order to make ends meet. Jealousy and betrayal invariably follow. Sadly, this is one of those ultra low budget productions that turns out to be all style over substance, and there just isn't enough of the latter to make it work. Some neat NATURAL BORN KILLERS moments are cool, but there's an overreliance on the sex scenes to make this work, and it doesn't pull it off.

The actresses are pretty hot in this otherwise pedestrian melodrama, but the budget is low and so is the level of imagination. A young couple is heavily in debt and headed for jail for embezzlement unless somebody steps in financially. Along comes a beautiful rich woman who happens to be dying and wants the lad for herself. The result is a few hot sex scenes in the middle of the picture. (Why doesn't this stuff ever happen to me? Seriously. I would totally do a rich, smoking hot heiress for money...) Anyway, most of the drama plays out in this really picturesque, very isolated mansion which is obviously meant to be symbolic of the sick woman's own bleak isolation etc. etc. That's about it for visual or structural innovation. Very little happens that the viewer doesn't see coming ten minutes ahead, with the effect that even though the movie is only about 80 minutes long, it movies at a snail's pace. Nice eye candy but not much else. Approach with extreme caution.

'Devil Angel' is notorious for it's 'Cat III' scenes featuring Vivian Hsu, but there's much more to it than a few sex scenes.

I'm not the greatest at plot descriptions, but since there isn't one here at the IMDB I thought I'd attempt one.

It's a about a young couple who fall deeply in love and swear to be together forever. However, things turn complicated when a beautiful rich woman dying of cancer falls for Vivian's man, and in the couple's need to for money to survive, he relents to become her gigolo.

But is he after her money or is he really falling for her?

I was kept on the edge of my seat by the intense lead performances of Vivian Hsu, Franco Jiang, and Si Man Yeung.

Although this was Vivian's first role she's the real pro, and proves she has talent as well as looks (she's primarily a singer).

I recommend 'Devil Angel', it's quite a poignant film, and I had no idea what was going to happen next.