I've come to realize that Taiwan romance is equally addictive when in poignant AND corny territory. And somewhere in between efforts like Cloud Of Romance travels but Errant Love however loses its battle with me, being an audience of today. Shirley Lui is Ho Pan Yun, a widow shortly after marriage and her heart is broken in pieces. Living with the family of her diseased husband, lively and energetic young woman of it, Chung Ko Hui (Nancy Lau) devotes her heart to handsome singer Kao Kan (Kenny Bee). However Kao Kan wants to connect to the musical and blue Pan Yun more. Enter a little rivalry, tragedy, deception and lotsa scenes of Kenny playing the guitar...

Noble themes of heartbroken romance isn't a bad thing and despite the many musical numbers, sometimes very unwarranted, the film is blessed with a moody soundtrack. However as characters start to ache, the emotional distress on display doesn't really translate and although performers are nowhere near embarrassing, the women on display aren't able to challenge the power of Brigitte Lin, the queen of Taiwan romances.

The images of a resigned Pauline Chan during the opening suggests something sad...wait...Johnny Wang directed this Category III drama so ah...everybody will go to hell then! Always nice to be in secure cinematic hands but Wang' "specialty" if you will was bone-crunching, intense violence and his dramatic excursions, attempting to speak of immigration issues, lies and deceit goes expectedly nowhere as there's no such confidence involved in the production. In a nutshell, Pauline Chan plays Hong, a prostitute that hooks up with ex-husband Sam (a sulky Alex Fong, pre-good acting days) who's been unwillingly drawn into a robbery scheme and is now a wanted man. Bricks keep falling on his head though as it's news to him that Hong is a hooker and Billy Chow, after fighting a nude Sophia Crawford, is out to silence Sam...

Now, I threw in the famous Sophia Crawford bit there because Escape From Brothel really thrives when its focus is on the wild, immoral sights. Electro shock torture, wild sex scenes (primarily one with Stuart Ong as a client wanting to try every position in the book), smashed in skulls, knife murders, baseball bats forced up cavites...you get the idea and while played almost completely straight, Johnny Wang only has the exploitation elements in his favour. Therefore, elements of Escape From Brothel are to be thanked for. By us in that crowd. I don't care if you know who I am. Murakami Rena co-stars as Hong's fellow hooker Ann while screenwriter Jamie Luk and William Ho also appear.

It's worth tracking down the Dutch VHS release issued by Eastern Heroes under the label 4-Bidden Asia as it contains an uncut print of the film with minor violent bits not in any other version. Their UK edition was heavily censored.

KENNETH'S REVIEW: In the producing group of most John Woo's movies from Once A Thief and onwards, Terence Chang attempted directing once with this horror flick in the vein of Friday the 13th, Halloween (there's a shot by shot scene from the original in Chang's movie) and monster flicks in general. Sort of fitting the story of the first part of the former, along the way Chang injects totally gratuitous tits, ass, bush (in fairly well shot underwater scenes), a boat party that leads into a groovy party montage (watch out for the Donald Duck bathing suit) and then love rivalry as the majority of the useless characters decide to go with primal lusts in favour of friendships (no sex scenes in the flick though). Thank god there's a creature (Roy Cheung) in the water to disrupt things then. Or perhaps not as the monster stalking isn't particularly eventful. We do get genre clichés aplenty as people act in the most stupid of ways, like peeing on burial urns and walking in thick forests by themselves. A little boy and his science experiments sets up our finale not subtlety at all and the sole fun image comes from the reveal that our water ghost doesn't bleed, he spurts water! And the nice guy finishes last in this one! Bonus points for a busty Elsie Chan.

Simon Loui can't have escaped your view as he seems to turn up almost everywhere (except the big budget vehicles) mostly playing odd ball characters with mildly amusing, harmless results. Which means that his impression on a film usually isn't very long lasting and same can be said for his directorial debut Escape From Hong Kong Island.

The moral of the story as presented by Loui is glaringly obvious as we follow stock broker and genuine a-hole Raymond Mak (Jordan Chan) and his struggles to get to a job interview across the harbor in Kowloon. After being robbed of all his money, it's soon apparent that he's made no friends in this world that are willing to help out...

Shot on the cheap and not a little self indulgent in visual style and presentation of comedy, Loui hopes and prays that the inclusion of blurry visuals, split screens, Jim Chin and Chapman To will produce amusing results. As hard as it is to admit as performers Chin and To are annoying and largely unfunny respectively, there is an aura to Escape From Hong Kong Island that is mildly amusing and harmless. Jordan Chan gets us easily through the running time, handling the cliché development of Raymond as competently as the familiar script will allow and Loui paces the movie well enough, not overstaying his and its welcome. Whether or not he's is welcome to dabble in directing again is questionable as this first foray equals what he usually does when in front of the camera. It certainly rarely cost anything to have him there but if Loui want to further himself, he really should venture into darkness next as he proved in Killing End that he can make a long lasting, even haunting impression. Escape From Hong Kong Island is almost forgotten by the time I write this and is not a fine addition to 2004's Hong Kong output but there are a few more worse ones and that is some kind of kudos to Loui I guess. A host of familiar faces turn up including Law Kar-Ying, Tats Lau, Vincent Kok, Emily Kwan, Wayne Lai, Cheung Tat-Ming and Barbara Wong.

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Reports are that Leung Po-Chi (He Lives By Night, Hong Kong 1941) started off as helm of this project before getting the boot after producer Karl Maka felt unsatisfied with his work. The assistant director Ringo Lam instead got upgrade to debuting director and helmed mostly a typical Cinema City production with the addition of a little of his own flavour.

No, it's really not a pre-cursor to anything that's now highly associated with Lam. I.e. gritty realism and pessimism (City On Fire, School On Fire) and largely Esprit D'amour certainly is a product of its time, featuring numerous silly bits in combination with the supernatural angle (man-ghost romance). The 80s cinema of Hong Kong often had its charms, combining a confidence in an actual uneven package and the film corresponds to that. Alan Tam fans probably walked home happy as their favourite star goes bare chested and engages in ghostly love with Joyce Ngai. The late Bill Tung's role becomes an in-joke as well as in real life he was devoting himself to the world of horse racing just like his character in this film. Phillip Chan is also allowed to be funny for once, a nice spark to the flow of the film. Cecilia Yip, Tien Feng and Lung Tin-Sang co-stars.

Then Ringo's dark demons surface and the film becomes another definition of a true Hong Kong product. Ejecting all notions of fun, Lam delivers a stylish tension-filled ending that makes you realize that Esprit D'amour actually holds some significance in regards to the future trajectory of his.

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Yesasia.com

A late directorial talent, Chen Yi Fei was otherwise an acclaimed painter of Chinese landscapes for most of his life. Evening Liaison and The Music Box represented his sole directed films before his death in 2005. It comes as no surprise then that the film is expertly designed, shot and scored, aspects that evokes fine eerie atmosphere, atmosphere of dread and the atmosphere of the time in the 1930s. Within this we find the story of a seemingly lonely press photographer (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) who encounters and falls in love with a woman claiming to be a ghost (played by Mabel Zhang). It's the Mainland Chinese Ghost Story then and right on cue, dialogue concerning that man can't fall in love with ghost finds its place in the film. But it's clear our initial truth may not be THE truth and although the interest peters a little as we move along, director Chen involves with his combo of art and flashback structure with several potential areas the story can head to. Politics gets covered, parallels to depression and at the end of the day, Evening Liaison doesn't live up to its rather great beginning reels but has us reeled in to a decent degree throughout.

Based on a folklore of the pre-revolutionary era, the film was given technical awards at both the Taiwan Golden Horse and Golden Rooster Awards.