Desejos Mortais

This is either brilliant Asian horror or total claptrap. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Hmm. I'm split. The first half is totally compelling as we watch a brilliant young Chinese lesbian art student veer off into a fascination with photographing death after witnessing a fatal traffic accident. She's obsessed with capturing the moment of death on her Nikon, be it chicken or fish or a suicide jumper from a tall building. We watch lovely young Jin as she follows her muse into dangerous places.

There may be a reason in her past for this obsession. Her lesbian partner is really worried about her. And -- whoa! -- now there's a boy in her life who has obviously fallen in love with her.

A lot of interesting elements have come into play. And the Pang brothers are brilliant cinematographers and editors. Sheer beauty on the screen. I cannot stress how magnificently this is filmed.

Then comes the last half hour. It is total gibberish. And it's filmed in such deep darkness you cannot see what's going on (I am talking about the DVD version). All you can tell is that it involves bondage and sadomasochism. A woman bound to a chair is screaming her lungs out. Someone unseen is tormenting her.

If some truth came out, I totally missed it. Maybe it's a western thing. I like Asian horror movies. But this left me baffled.