Tenderly sadomasochistic and defiant toward politically correct views on gender politics, Chinese director Liu Fendou’s (劉奮鬥) second feature Ocean Flame (一半海水，一半火燄) takes the bad-guy-corrupting-innocent-girl story to the extreme with this tale of a tortured love affair between a ruthless criminal and an innocent waitress.
The film plays out in flashbacks as
ex-con Wang Yao (Liao Fan, 廖凡) barges in on a family after being released from prison. A small-time criminal who ran a prostitution ring with friends before his incarceration, Wang made a comfortable living by blackmailing male customers in hotel-room sex scams.
To the unscrupulous Wang, it is love at first sight with attractive young waitress Li Chuan (Monica Mok, 莫小奇). The two are soon consumed with sex and passion, captivatingly shown in a sex scene on a glittering, empty beach.
Yet as Wang introduces Li to his sordid world and lists her as one of his working girls, the pair’s desperate addiction to love inevitably paves the way for self-destruction.
The third big-screen adaptation of renowned Chinese writer Wang Shuo’s (王朔) novel of the same title (previous versions include the 2001 US film Love the Hard Way starring Adrien Brody), Liu’s violent and erotically charged film creates an enclosed world in which the characters, twisted and bursting with overwrought emotions, swing between unsettling sadomasochism and brutal romanticism, the contrasting feelings suggested by the film’s title.
Chinese actor Liao possesses enough dangerous charisma to help him get away with the sometimes overwritten dialogue and come off as an almost enchanting abuser. Newcomer Mok has been nominated for best leading actress at the upcoming Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎) for her daring and intense performance. The cameos by Hong Kong veteran actors, however, feel superfluous to the narrative.
Exactingly arranged and masterfully crafted in terms of filmmaking, Ocean Flame derives its charm, or shortcoming to some, from a pronounced feel of theatricality and staged emotions that will attract art-house moviegoers with dark characters whose pride and despair lead to self-destruction.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
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