But the script is first and foremost a romance, seasoned with a nice dash of gangland action. It all makes for top-flight melodrama. The production has terrific staging. The beach bar, shown with such brilliance at the top of the film, looks soulless when the family has to sell it. Its redesign as a high-end yuppie joint made of endless negative space and slashes of purple resembling a Death Star cocktail lounge. The promise sketched into shape during those opening minutes feels painfully distant and is a fitting emblem for the predicament of Lap, caught on the barbs of laissez-faire capitalism and tyranny.
Tony Leung is great in an early role, playing a young and sweet-natured minder for Shen. He has secretly fallen for Lap and is happy to be in her orbit, even as she pours her heart out to him about Rick. He is her only friend and confidant in the hell she has submitted herself to, and he has to decide how far his love for her will take him in defying his boss.
“The action is brilliant.”
The wild music has a hot intensity that strikes away any ambiguities, giving the performances matchless support. Danny Chung’s score might sound overbearing at first, but it is used to insistent and excellent effect. The wild freeze frames and cinematographer Christoper Doyle’s acid-toned compositions create a deeply stylized film that probes for sweet misery like a tongue around a bad tooth. The texture and despair of life in the underworld are rendered wickedly tangible. Not least when Lap is invited to sing for a bunch of Japanese clients while her father kneels on the bar room floor, having booze poured into his mouth by Shen’s foul henchman.
My Heart is That Eternal Rose is not all love, death, and misery. The action is brilliant. Tam’s rendering of the disastrous smuggling operation at the opening is a master class in satisfying and logical action. The shootouts that dominate the last act have an operatic splash reminiscent of Woo. This is a very high point not just for Hong Kong cinema but for cinema in general.
"…a very high point, not just for Hong Kong cinema but for cinema in general."
