150 Word Review: 'Rouge' (1988)
Don't make promises you can't keep
In director Stanley Kwan's gorgeously sad supernatural romance Rouge, Hell exists for the living and the dead. His movie opens in the colorful teahouses of Hong Kong in the 1930s. We meet a famous courtesan and a wealthy but feckless young man, Fluer and Chan. They fall in love, but the boy's parents reject their union. And so, these doomed lovers commit suicide.
Fifty-three years later, Fleur returns to the land of the living in search of Chan, who never joined her in the underworld. This modern Hong Kong is dirty and dark. Fleur's soul is lost, and she reaches out to a pair of journalists for help. Anita Mui stuns as a ghost longing for her one true love. Alex Man is a perfect as a humble newspaperman freaked out by the undead. This is a tragedy about broken vows, an opium-haze that whispers, "Would you die for love?"