Sunday, May 14, 2017

Maybe It's Love, Angela Chan, 1984

A "desperate housewifes of the New Territories" expose slowly taken over by a Rear Window plot. Which in turn gradually morphs into an Our Gang murder mystery while also serving as an anti-bullying message picture. On top of that: a Cherie Chung workout montage, a Cherie Chung aerobic montage, a prolonged softcore sex scene, animals popping up at weird moments, and a subplot chronicling the sexual self-discovery of the local white guy.

To be sure, except for the very 80s Cherie Chung as visual pleasure stuff none of this works like intended - with the thriller plot at several points turning into a complete trainwreck. But still... there's so much going on, in every single scene... There's a disturbing undertone of sexual violence, an underlying rape threat which seems to throw all social relations off balance, maiming the women, but also unsettling the men. It doesn't really lead anywhere, but still it adds up to a sense of hysteria which is in a strange way only enhanced by the fact that the film doesn't manage (or even try) to transform it into a coherent aesthetic form.

No comments: