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Chances are no one will ever see this film in the United States seeing as that it has been buried in the vaults at some studio in some trade deal so that The Little Mermaid II or Alladin could be shown in China. It's no wonder seeing as that the film while having ambitions of pushing China's cinematic language to embrace the West (by shooting in both English and Chinese with a mixed cast of americans and chinese actors)actually creeps further and further back into old form as the film plays out into a conventional hero-worship of the Maoist revolution in the 1930's.The frame-work of the plot starts with a depression-era doctor from the States hiding out in Shanghai (the original title was Shanghai Story)while he parties and enjoys a typical American self-indulgence of women and jazz. He then encounters a mysterious woman (Mei-Ting) asking for help in the middle of the night. While reluctant at first the doctor can't help but be intrigued by her beauty, allure and curious citing of his Hipocratic oath. The so-called 'help' she needs is actually the aiding of a wounded Maoist revolutionary named Jing (Leslie Cheung of 'Farewell, My Concubine').Getting caught up inadvertently in a revolution the doctor finds himself mired in a moral and socialogical debate over the nature of love and the responsibility of an individual to what he thinks is right in the face of adversity. The film is meant to view the Maoist revolution through Western eyes to bring a sense of understanding to what these, at the time, heroes were fighting for. Unfortunately, as the film's story unfolds the director's vision seems more and more compromised as the narrator and western ambassador to all things Chinese becomes more and more marginalized as does all sentiments that he has any voice in the revolution or even in the so-called love triangle.While one must admire Yip Ying (Ye Daying), the director's, attempted vision of bringing domestic Chinese film language strides ahead by having a film told from an american point of view, in english as well as having him be in the center of a love triangle with a mandarin woman (yes, this is daring in China) it must be noted that that resolve seems to wither and eventually disolve by the films end. What we are left with is a typical, old-world Maoist sentiment saying that westerners are naive, shallow and can only hope to observe the grandeur of the revolution but will never truly understand it.It must be noted, though, that the performances of Mei-Ting as the mysterious 'Red Woman' and Leslie Cheung (Jing) are uniformly powerful and often understated and have particular resonance amid all the death and hardships of the period. It just seems unfortunant that the third corner of their triangle was left simply to view that love rather than participate in it which would have made them all the more potent. That, then, would have been truly 'revolutionary' and perhaps the film could rise above it's diluted Casablanca riff and fallen closer to The English Patient ranks where it aspired to be.A lost review for a lost film...
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