Rouge

Yan zhi kou
Stanley Kwan
Part of

Emotion Pictures: International Melodrama

December 13, 2017 - January 7, 2018

Melodrama master Stanley Kwan weaves an entrancingly strange and sensual tale of ghosts, opium, and erotic death as the spirit of a 1930s courtesan returns from hell to search for her long-lost lover in 1980s Hong Kong.

DIRECTOR
Stanley Kwan
YEAR
1987
COUNTRY
Hong Kong
RUNTIME
93 minutes
LANGUAGE
Cantonese with English subtitles
ORIGINAL TITLE
Yan zhi kou

In the tradition of Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli, Hong Kong auteur Stanley Kwan creates expressively stylized emotion spectacles etched in sumptuous mise-en-scène. In this entrancingly strange and sensual ghost story, 1930s courtesan Fleur (HK icon Anita Mui) dies of an opium overdose in a suicide pact with her forbidden lover (Leslie Cheung). She goes to hell, but he doesn’t join her there as expected. Fifty years later she returns to Earth in search of him… This outré premise is played by Kwan with supreme sincerity, yielding a majestically melancholy memory piece and a rich, provocative exploration of the link between love, sex, and death.

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