Love Unto Wastes
Detective Lan: Chow Yun-Fat
Yuen Bui Yee: Irene Wan Pik-Ha
Jean Cheung: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai
Chiu Suk Ling: Tsoi Kam
"Jade Screen" Liu Yuk Ping: Elaine Kam Ying-Ling
director: Stanley Kwan Kam-Pang
IMDb link: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0090922
other links:
Version reviewed: VCD
Ratings:
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DVD Audio: 6 of 10
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DVD Video: 4 of 10
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Subtitles: 6 of 10
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Story: 7 of 10
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Performances: 7 of 10
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CYF: 8 of 10
A film which is fascinating and boring by turns, Love Unto
Wastes is a murder mystery with no resolution, a character study
of empty lives and a tribute to self-absorption.
Love Unto Wastes is nominally about three women and one man
who become friends, in a vague sort of way; two of the women are
roommates in a fashionable apartment in Causeway Bay. Chiu Suk Ling
and Liu Yuk Ping, both originally from Taiwan, have journeyed to
Hong Kong to forge careers in show business with nominal success. Miss
Chiu is a cabaret singer, talented but tortured with longing for her
home and lover in Taiwan; she cries to herself in her misery but doesn't
seem to be willing to resolve things one way or another. Miss Liu is an
actress who lives for the recognition of being in films but finds that
mostly it is her naked body which is offered the roles as opposed to
any other talents she might have. Jealous of anyone who might take the
center of attention away from her, "Jade Screen" is brash and sophisticated
on the surface, but beneath is just another woman waiting to be used in
exchange for a moment's notice.
Miss Liu becomes acquainted with the listless Billie Yuen Bui Yee, a younger
woman who has actually achieved a modicum of professional success as
a cosmetics model. Spending hours admiring herself on billboards, in
magazine layouts and on counter adverts in department stores, Billie
is a shell of a woman who has no desire to be anything more. Devoid
of shame, she asks for and accepts money from anyone who will give it
to her without restrictions.
Known to these three women is Jean Cheung, the son of a successful rice
merchant. After meeting Billie through the act of vomiting on her dress
at a nightclub, he has a rendezvous with Billie at her request and agrees to pay for her
new apartment. They seem to enter their sexual relationship with all of
the pomp and circumstance of buying a used car; she has it, he wants it,
he pays for it, she hands it over.
The first third of the film introduces us to these characters and their
relationships with one another, but little about the characters
themselves. This isn't an oversight or a flaw, but the point of this portion
of the film - there is very little to learn, because there is very little
to know. Self-absorbed, vain, reveling in their very miseries, these four
young people are studies in arrogant vacuity.
Into the lives of these four fall a tragedy, with which their personalities
are ill-equipped to handle: Chiu Suk Ling, the cabaret singer, is brutally
murdered in the apartment she shares with Jade Screen Liu. When Liu returns
from a "casting session" in the wee hours of a particular morning, she
finds the bloody remains of her roommate and thus begins the second, and
more interesting, portion of the film.
Investigating the murder of Miss Chiu is Detective Lan, a man who is only 35
years old but seems much older. Slovenly in both appearance and manners,
Lan chain-smokes and shuffles about his job in a puzzling manner; one is
never quite sure of his motives, or even if his questions relate to the
investigation at hand or are just random ramblings. As he begins to
question the remaining three friends about Miss Chiu, we begin to understand
that Lan is a man who is literally falling apart - his skin is rough, his
face bloated; he suffers from nosebleeds and coughs with gut-wrenching
severity. His reaction to his maladies is a resignation tinged with boredom;
at one point he reaches up to scratch his head and a tuft of hair clings to
his fingers. Looking at it briefly, he holds out his hand and blows a puff
of air, and the hair wafts away. Obviously a man waiting for death in fact,
he has already died in other ways; the three friends whom Lan now goes about
apparently befriending are too blind with their own plights to notice.
They seem to believe that he is lonely, or bored, or fascinated by their
stylishly tragic lives.
At first glance this seems to be a glorification of the ennui which was so
fashionably adopted by the young 1980s middle-class privileged; and yet, at the
denouement of the film, as Lan lays dying on his hospital bed, he tells
Cheung the actual reason for his pursuit of the company of Cheung, Liu and
Yuen. Knowing he was dying, his life literally wasting away and his future
cut short, he saw them purposely throwing away their lives and futures and
felt superior to them. Far from being fascinated with their lives, he looked
upon them with a benign contempt. Cheung seems to understand this and even
agrees, but as the film ends the viewer is left with the feeling that nothing
will change, this has been no clarion call for Cheung, and that things will go
on just as before because it would just require too much effort to change.
While Tony Leung Chiu-Wai's portrayal of Cheung is interesting, it's such a
minimalist part that it's easy to overlook the deadpan energy he puts into
the role. The parts of Liu and Chiu are equally devoid of meaning and
thus are really not showcases for their respective actresses. Irene Wan Pik-Ha
as Billie is sullen and vain but has none of the animation that one might
expect from such a character and as such fits the director's bill perfectly.
Chow Yun-Fat as Detective Lan treads a fine line between comedy and tragedy;
at first Lan seems to be a bit simple but deeper layers are revealed as the
film goes on and that is what makes both his character and his performance
unique in this film - there are other layers to be explored. The
famous scene in the rice shop of Lan and Cheung on the balcony is eerie and
well played; Lan's stern Nazi salute melts into a childlike wave at the
astonished shopkeeper and employees below. Like no other scene, this gives
us a glimpse into the mind of a man with literally almost nothing left to
lose, and who is trying to wring everything he can from what little life has
left to offer him.
More of a film to be studied than watched, Love Unto Wastes will probably
only be of interest to those who enjoy, or at least can tolerate, the
self-important art film. Some have found it to be a sweet love story, although
I will admit I just can't see that in this movie at all. Others have found it
to be a laughable exercise in yuppie angst and little more. No matter if
you find it to be at one extreme or the other, or in the middle somewhere,
Love Unto Wastes is another film worth watching just for the performance
of Chow Yun-Fat who can bring that spark to even the most lifeless of characters.
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