TEMPTRESS MOON
A film review by Mun Siong Yoong
Copyright 1996 Mun Siong Yoong
Directed by: Chen Kaige Producer: Hsu Feng Written by: Chen Kaige, Wang Anyi Cast: Leslie Cheung, Gong Li, He Caifei, Kevin Lin Jian Hua, David Wu Run Time: 113 minutes
LES LIASONS DANGEREUSES GOES EAST BY WAY OF CHEN KAIGE.
In his third outing as a scriptwriter, following LIFE ON A STRING (Bian Zou Bian Chang, 1991) and the highly acclaimed YELLOW EARTH (Huang Tudi, 1994), Chen returns to his favoured niche of painting the microcosm of life at the dawn of the new Chinese Rep ublic.
It is the year 1911, and Zhongliang (Leslie Cheung) naively comes under the roof of the feudal Pang household at the invitation of his married sister Xiuyi (He Saifei) while the rest of China is experiencing political turmoil . However, it is not long before he is subjected to a terrifying period of psychological and near-incestuous assault under the hands of his opium addicted brother-in-law.
He subsequently flees for the glitzy, cabaret world of Shanghai in the Roaring 20s where he comes under the tutelage of a secret society gangster (Xie Tian). Here, Zhongliang plys his trade as a thief of hearts, offering amour on the cheap to lone ly tai tais before accomplices step in and extort money at the appropriate moment.
Back at the Pang household where he had left a decade ago, an overdose of opium has rendered Zhongliang's brother-in-law brain-dead, and the family moves to encamp the latter's younger sister Ruyi (Gong Li) as head of the household, with distant cousin Du anwu (Kevin Lin) as her aide.
The trouble starts when Zhongliang's boss decides to use him to seduce Ruyi so as to gain the Pang estate (a treasure-filled mansion artfully placed in a large water lily encrusted lake in Suzhou).
>From whence the plots splits into a confusing dichotomy of emotional revelations. Zhongliang returns to the house to carry out his directives and exorcise personal demons but inevitably gets his emotions mixed up with the job at hand. The besotted victim, Ruyi runs into a conflict of emotions with having to shoulder the manly task of running the household under the sexist glances of family elders on one hand and discovering her sexual awakening after a lifetime of societal isolation on the other.
Along the way, numerous subplots weave themselves into the main storyline, with constant flashbacks into Zhongliang's tortured childhood and his relationship with his scheming sister, now a Pang dependant waiting for her ride into oblivion.
These nuggets of information, while courageous in their attempt to flesh out the emotional capacities of the leads, has a tendency to go into stylised, emotional overdrive and eventually serves only to diffuse the focus of the film. All fingers point to t he fact Chen seems rather guilty of participating in sentimental indulgence for the sake of leaving his thumprint in the movie. Still, both leads Cheung and Gong Li don't quite hedge up enough sincerity to convince as emotionally manipulated victims.
While one cannot argue with the sumptousness of the sets and costumes nor contest the cinematographical techniques of Du Kefung (from Wong Kar Wai's FALLEN ANGEL), one cannot help but wonder if Chen scripwriting abilities would be more easily swallowed if there was a more determined effort on Chen's part to shoot the movie from a realist's perspective.
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