Romance meets ghost story in Hong Kong movie masterpiece Rouge, starring Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung and directed by Stanley Kwan
- Anita Mui plays a prostitute in 1930s Hong Kong and Leslie Cheung her lover and heir to a family fortune. Unable to be together, they agree a suicide pact
- Fifty years later, Mui’s ghost is looking for her lover in a changed city. Director Stanley Kwan plays on nostalgia for the past at a time of uncertainty
Part ghost story, part romance and part elegy for a vanished era, Stanley Kwan Kam-pang’s 1988 film Rouge is one of the masterpieces of Hong Kong cinema.
The delicately wrought story, adapted from a novel by Lilian Lee, features Anita Mui Yim-fong as a ghost from the 1930s searching for her lover, played by Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, in 1980s Hong Kong.
Mui’s character, a courtesan, engages a somewhat reluctant modern couple in her search, allowing Kwan to contrast the outlooks of the two different generations, and to gently note the physical and cultural changes that have occurred in the city during the ghost’s 50-year search.
“Rouge provides a much-needed breath of fresh air to a Hong Kong cinema scene suffocated by the fire and smoke of mob movies,” wrote critic Perry Lam in a Post review on the film’s release in 1988. “It is an extremely well-made film, graceful, intelligent and handsome.”
Rouge was a big winner at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 1989, coming top in six categories, including best picture, best director and best actress (for Mui).
The story begins in the 1930s, when Fleur (Mui), a prostitute at an upmarket brothel, and Master 12 (Cheung), the timid scion of a wealthy trading family, fall in love. The two spend time making love and smoking opium together, but their marriage is forbidden by Master 12’s mother, who humiliates Fleur.
