The Last Affair
Kwong-Ping: Chow Yun-Fat
Bing: Pat Ha Man-Chik
Ha-Ching: Carol Cheng Yu-Ling
directed by: Tony Au Ding-Ping
IMDb link: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0085697
other links:
Version reviewed: LD
Ratings:
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LD Audio: 7 of 10
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LD Video: 5 of 10
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Subtitles: 7 of 10
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Story: 5 of 10
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Performances: 5 of 10
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CYF: 5 of 10
I like Tony Au, I really do. His Dream Lovers is one of my favorite
CYF films. While I really like Tony Au and I really like his style of direction and
I really like the way his movies are photographed, I really can't stand
The Last Affair.
This is a movie which might have been very good but for a few really glaring
problems. One is that it is so self-consciously arty that if this film were
sitting next to you on a bus, you would slap it repeatedly while saying "just get
OVER yourself". Taking place in a Paris-that-never-was, starving artists live in
plush garrets, dress in designer rags, speak a lot of philosophic twaddle
and seem to not have any hobbies outside the horizontal boogie. While that's an
extremely fine hobby to have, especially when it requires CYF to disrobe repeatedly,
after a certain point you begin to wish that these people would at least smile
now and then while engaging in their Parisian pastime.
Carol Cheng as Ha-Ching has never looked so unappealing as in this film. How the costumer
managed to dress her in the height of 1983 fashion and still make her look dowdy
is beyond me; perhaps it's the Mary Tyler-Moore hairstyle, or the bland orange-toned
makeup that makes everything from her lips to her ankles the same color.
Sadly, her character is just as colorless. She makes
love and chops the heads off of live fish with the same expression, namely 'vacant'.
Ha-Ching can be summed up in the words "this space for rent".
Chow Yun-Fat could have performed the role of Kwong-Ping in his sleep; he probably
had to survive on No-Doz and black coffee just to keep awake while on the set because
there is nothing for him to do in this film except look beautiful. While he does
that without any effort, it's a terrible waste of an actor who can do so much
more. To see him dressed in neo-Greco rags and mime makeup while pretending to
play the violin is enough to make you cringe. Fortunately it doesn't last long.
The incredible pretentiousness of the entire opera sequence is almost, but not
quite, enough to make you laugh out loud. You just sit there and wonder, while
trying to avoid the pointed references in the opera lyrics to the plot of the
film itself, just what Fung Miu (the scriptwriter) and Tony Au were thinking
when they dreamed up some of this stuff.
Pat Ha, a beautifully serene actress, seems as if she's struggling against a tight
layer of SaranWrap rolled all around her as she attempts to bring some life to
the character of Bing. You can see her performance deep down in there somewhere,
but either Tony Au refused to let her bring it out or she was so depressed by
the plot, pacing and characterizations of the film that she just didn't have the
strength to ever really let go.
Bing, a former lover (along with most of the female population of Paris) of
Kwong-Ping, is engaged to be married to a solid Vietnamese restauranteur; she
had hopes of being a poet but now is a cashier in her husband's restaurant.
Her school friend Ha-ching is married to a boorish businessman whom she does not
love but doesn't have the courage to leave. Paying Bing a visit in Paris, Ha-Ching
seems to have left her wedding ring behind in Hong Kong, as the moment she sees
Kwong-Ping in the subway she flirts with a leaden slackness which doesn't as
much communicate she's interested as much as she's already washed her comb and so
has run out of ideas for how to enjoy Paris.
Not one to miss an opportunity
however, when Kwong-Ping runs into her at a birthday party it's only a matter of
hours before he shows her other things, other than squeaky clean combs, that
make for interesting vacation memories.
Kwong-Ping is a vacuous sort, but relatively good-natured; he writes his lover's
legacy in a pen dipped in any color or nationality of ink for the sheer love of
penmanship. Unfortunately Bing, Ha-Ching, Sophie the opera singer and a host of
other women who provide the sheets on which he writes don't necessarily share his
views; while Bing simply pines after Kwong-Ping and visits him whenever his bed
is in danger of cooling off, Ha-Ching becomes possessive and insanely jealous.
Poor Kwong-Ping though misses out on the little hints Ha-Ching had a tendency to drop,
like taking a still-squirming beheaded fish to bed, keeping a butcher knife by
the bathtub, and screaming at him in the streets. Unfortunately for all concerned
(except perhaps Bing's fiance), the heavy-lidded erotic fog in which Kwong-Ping
happily wanders isn't penetrated by any of these warning signs until it's too
late.
There are fleeting moments of the film which are enjoyable for the cinematography
or for Chow Yun-Fat's beauty, but ultimately no matter how nice it is to see CYF
glowing golden in nothing but soapy skin, it's just not enough to really watch this film
more than once. I can see pretty shots of the Seine anywhere. While the
scenes of CYF's lovemaking to various and sundry women are sensuous and quite tasty,
the basically downbeat performances, brooding direction and ponderous script make
for a bland and very unsatisfying whole.
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