Though not a great film, my
sense is that this 1997 United Filmmakers Organization (UFO)
production tends to be unfairly overshadowed by other works.
Made one year after what is widely considered to be the company*s
strongest achievement, the critically acclaimed as well as popular
※Comrades, Almost a Love Story§, this other dramatic offering
whose story also spans decades and a couple*s lifetimes can appear
alternately more overwrought and prosaic in comparison (but then,
few movies wouldn*t). That which could be categorized as a
lesbian melodrama (though, as the webmaster of the Peter Grimes site
started off his review by stating, ※a summary like that really
doesn't do the film justice so allow me to elaborate#§) had the
misfortune too to come out in the same year as Wong Kar Wai*s ※Happy
Together§ (that in which, rather ironically, one of this Jacob
Cheung film*s stars* real life long time beau appeared).
Additionally, although
Carina Lau was the early favorite, Maggie Cheung (the female lead of
※Comrades§) ended up winning the Best Actress prize -- for her
largely dubbed performance in Mabel Cheung*s ※The Soong Sisters§
-- at the Hong Kong Film Awards (The announcement apparently so
appalled as well as shocked some of the attendees that their loud
cries of ※yao mo gao cho§ reverberated around the
auditorium!). IMHO, this is the greatest injustice of all
since the multi-layered performance of the four time HKFA Best
Actress nominee -- who sometimes seems condemned to be ※always the
bridesmaid, never the bride§ -- is what really makes INTIMATES as
good a work as it is. Put another way: In this film, she
who had previously convinced as well as impressed when playing
formidable femmes (I think of those she essayed in ※Days of Being
Wild§, ※He*s a Woman, She*s a Man§, ※Girls without
Tomorrow§ and ※Saviour of the Soul§) reaches new heights with
such a sensitive portrayal of a strong woman that the (re)viewer
truly feels for her -- and feels her pain when struggling against,
or learning to accept, particular fates -- rather than just
distantly admire her fortitude (and talents).
Despite her clearly being at
its heart, INTIMATES actually doesn*t begin with Carina Lau*s
character (who is named Wan). Instead, the first voice we hear
is -- unfortunately -- Theresa Lee*s horribly squeaky one.
Although the young Canadian-born actress and the generations older
Gua Ah Leh both do seem to be trying their best, the fact of the
matter is that the contemporary subplot -- about a romantically
troubled Hong Kong girl-woman whose father has charged her with
taking his old family help home to China to meet up with a friend
she has not seen for what may have been as much as half a lifetime
-- and scenes in which they figure let down the rest of the
film. There apparently is a longer Director*s Cut version of
this already not brief 每 and eventful --drama floating out there
somewhere. While it would help one to understand their
characters better should more time be spent on them, I still would
wish that if I were to ever see a lengthier INTIMATES, the extra
sections would feature the work*s two main women rather than the
subsidiary characters essayed by Lee and Gua (never mind the love
interests portrayed by Winston Chao and Chin Kar Lok).
When INTIMATES first flashes
back to a(n often beautifully reconstructed but definitely not
idealized) pre-World War II past, it is to a formal ceremony in
which a young woman (touchingly portrayed by the always winsome
Charlie Yeung) is being taken into the protective bosoms of a
self-sufficient female society of Self-Combed Women (N.B. This is
the Chinese title of this often feminist feeling film. And it
may interest some to know that members of this sisterhood -- which
really did historically exist (and maybe still does) -- are the
subject of the 1991 Gail Tsukiyama novel entitled ※Women of the
Silk§). Midway through however, Foon*s initiation gets
interrupted by men sent by someone who wants her for himself and
paid her parents money to do so. Events threaten to turn ugly,
especially with the induced involvement of Foon*s parents in them
(the father*s impotency is frustrating to witness, her mother*s
plea heart-wrenching to hear and see). The desperate girl is
saved though by a female stranger passing by in a boat (waterways
are as much utilized as roads in the area that is the production*s
main locale).
She is soon identified as
Wan: Whom Foon next encounters while working in a silk factory
alongside her fellow Self-Combed Women. As it turns out, that
production place of prized silk, ※especially fine because they are
prepared by virgins§ (these women take vows of chastity as well as
solidarity), is owned by the man who takes the herself amply
sexually experienced Wan as his eighth -- yes, eighth! 每
wife. And as one can expect of melodramatic sagas like this
one, before too long, he (who is played with requisite sleaziness by
Stephen Tung) is revealed as valuing the family business more than
members of his household by his willingness to put one of our
heroines in a worse situation than the imperfect one she had thought
would be her lot in life. By far the best thing that can be
said about what ensues is that the title characters of INTIMATES
(also) find out quite a bit, albeit in small degrees, about 每
including how much and in what ways one cares for -- the other.
Although INTIMATES is
clearly a Hong Kong film (despite events it depicted largely taking
place in Mainland China), it has two flaws which this (re)viewer
associates with two Hollywood productions. The first is that
like in ※The Joy Luck Club§, certain characters are so strongly
drawn and depicted that they end up overshadowing and trivializing
others (who end up appearing like spoiled brats rather than fellow
suffering individuals). The second is that, as with ※The
Color Purple§, there is nary a good man 每 as opposed to woman
每 in sight (be it in the past or the present day). As such,
even while I was majorly emotionally affected by the stories of the
characters brought to life by Carina Lau and Charlie Yeung, I can*t
help but wonder whether the film as a whole would have been better
served by not having them stand out so much morally but also
visually (The camera does tend to lovingly linger on these two
indisputably photogenic women). This is not least because I
think that those two individuals don*t need all that much contrast
to look good since they possess ample abilities to impress in their
own right.
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