Amours déchus

Back in the days when most major cities had at least one theatre running the current Hong Kong product, the keen movie goers could familiarise themselves with the industry's output as easily as any English language material.

By 1986 the presence of Chow Yun-fat was a flag on any production, after a string of superior efforts - STORY OF WU VIET, HONG KONG 1941, THE POSTMAN STRIKES BACK. I wandered into this one without knowing anything about it and was blown away.

It is the classic misleading exposition movie, starting like a teen romance, moving into murder mystery and ending as something more thoughtful - a contemplation of isolation.

Director Stanley Kwan later told me that Chow gave a superior performance without understanding the film. The largely unknown cast all register and the shifts of setting from the high fashion city , the trip to Taiwan with the ashes of the victim and the hospital finale are film making of a high class.

Kwan next made the exceptional ROUGE and is still on top of his game, having just turned out EVERLASTING REGRET, after a few less well judged items.

I notice that there are no comments on LOVE UNTO WASTE (not the best chosen title) which is surprising for a film of its quality and importance.

"I think she really tried to break through this curtain, then open the door, and turn into a bird and fly away."

A film which starts off seeming like it will be about 20-somethings in Hong Kong enjoying the pleasures of single life, transitions to a murder mystery, then wrong-foots the audience again to deeper, melancholy themes. I was thinking the film had gone off the rails into melodrama, but then I realized how hard I had been hit in the gut by it. There is such emotional desolation here.

At the center of the film is the son of a rice merchant who pays little attention to the family business and shows up at 11am, often plays drinking games to the point of getting drunk, and moves from one shallow relationship to another (Tony Leung Chiu-wai). He uses the woman in the office who's really running things without seriously considering marrying her. He's a loafer but we only come to understand the extent of his vapid life gradually, and start off on his side (I mean, he is Tony Leung after all).

There are three women he's connected with, including a model who has a habit of hiding behind sunglasses like they're a mask and borrows money from her friends (Irene Wan), an actress who ponders having to do nude scenes and has sex in her house shortly after a brutal event (Elaine Jin), and a singer with heartache from a past relationship who is also harboring a secret (Tsai Chin). Tsai is the most likeable character, partially performing one of her own songs, Thousand Sails quite soulfully and playfully cooking up a chicken stuffed into a pig's stomach. Naturally, she ends up dead.

When a detective (Chow Yun-fat) enters the scene it seems at first he will be a Colombo type who hangs around oafishly and solves the crime, but gradually we see he's fractured as well. It starts with little moments, like a slap across the face to one of the young women when she's emotional, and the balcony at the rice business reminding him of a Sieg Heil from Hitler (what?). The feeling that something's off is amplified when it seems he really just wants to hang out with the younger people and we see the state of his apartment, his wife having divorced him.

I won't spoil where it goes from there but it had shades of L'Avventura about it, and the revelation was masterfully done. Some of the conversations ruing physical entanglements (like the silly but memorable romp in the rice) are a little too on-the-nose, but the feeling of isolation and loneliness is powerful.

Quote: "That's how love feels. It doesn't matter if it's between friends or lovers. The Chinese compare love to a debt. You drip acid into my heart. I do it to yours. It's cruel and excruciating. Only the boldest can take it on."