Love Unto Wastes

This is a unique masterpiece by director Stanley Kwan in which he reveals the existential state of modern people. Four people with different backgrounds: rice shop owner Tony (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) who befriends model Billie (Irene Wan) at a bar, actress Yuk-ping (Elaine Jin) who is about to strip her way to fame and singer Suk-jun (Tsai Chin), find, comfort and probe into one another in the emptiness of their lives. Soon, a murder takes place. The police officer investigating the case, Inspector Lan (Chow Yun-fat), gets caught up in this entanglement of love and desire…. This story is based on the experiences of Stanley Kwan’s friend. In the hands of screenwriter Chiu-Dai An-ping (nom de plume of Chiu Kang-chien), it becomes an intriguing work of extraordinary colour, where human relationships are ambiguous, extraordinary twists abound, all enshrouded in the mists of death. The story-telling is untraditional and character-driven. The addition of outsiders into the mix impacts their relationships, exposing the tensions within. At the same time, we seem to be watching, in cold blood, the desperation and hopelessness of the characters. Stanley Kwan calmly breaks down the boundaries between love and death, old and new, men and women, all without moral criticism. The film contains numerous brilliant concrete and abstract symbols of combinations of life, death and sex. The characters desire and pursue happiness, but they are simply not happy. They waste their youth, letting the prime of their lives slip by. That kind of desperation is an echo of the emotional state of Hong Kong at the time, when the future of the city was unclear.

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