Finale in Blood

Dir: Fruit Chan
Scrs: Amy Cheung, Chan Hing-Ka
Prod Co: Try Ease, Golden Harvest
Cast: Lawrence Cheng, Tao Jun-wei, David Wu, Chikako Aoyama
1993 / Colour / DCP / Cantonese / Chi & Eng subtitles / 91min

Finale in Blood, the directorial debut of film-festival favourite Fruit Chan, is based on a popular classic of the Cantonese narrative singing artform naamyam. The film updates the Qing Dynasty setting to post-war Hong Kong but faithfully duplicates the naamyam melodramatics of love betrayed and wrathful jealousy. This is the story of a radio host, Cheng (Lawrence Cheng), who is rescued from the sea by a ghost hidden inside an umbrella (Tao Jun-mei) and goes on to help the latter look for her lover (David Wu). Fruit Chan, who had toiled in the film industry for years before finally given a chance at the helm, puts on display his grasp of film craftsmanship, handling this very commercial genre-blender with smooth storytelling and appropriate stylisations. Yet the film was withheld from release for three long years, briefly thwarting Chan's career advancement but perhaps motivating him to dig deeper into his artistic quest.

日期日期 Date	時間时间 Time	地點地点 Venue
4/3/2018 (Sun) #	2:30pm	Cinema, Hong Kong Film Archive

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