Mung chung yan

One of the few ghost stories to work on film, and one of the few really eerie and erotic films from Hong Kong that I have seen, this study of a couple caught up in the past is simply conceived but fascinatingly spun out as it follows their reactions stage by stage, thanks to the sensitive interplay of the two actors in their double roles. This is easily the (two) most interesting of Chow Yun Fat's performances I have seen, and it is illuminating to see Brigitte Lin head on for once, and allowed to develop her role(s) unobscured by the bizarre, the trivial, or the merely picturesque. The atmosphere of the early scenes very much resembles that of some of Robert Aickman's ghost stories, except that here one knows what is going on. One particularly pleasing and persuasive touch is that neither the lovers nor anyone else doubts it; the older characters feel the burden of the past too (there is probably an allegory in that, if one cared to work it out). My main quibble is with the synthesizer pulse in the background; it works, as it always does in films of this type, and here it is introduced legitimately (one of the characters composes synthesizer music), but the effect is still too easy, and the actors deserve a subtler one to match their performances.