Ghost stories have always been popular with Chinese audiences. With the star power of Shu Qi (
Visible Secret II (鬼味人間) puts Abe Kwang, who wrote and produced Visible Secret into the director's chair. His experience as a writer might account for the stronger narrative thread that holds this film together.
While graphically less ostentatious than its forerunner, Visible Secret II, is full of those feelings of paranoia that most of us can probably relate to -- when we wonder if a house or certain circumstances are out to "get you." Kwang has lots of fun playing around with this, creating situations that seem supernatural but have a more banal explanation, at the same time fully admitting the reality of the supernatural's influence on the world around us. He seems to be saying that what looks like the work of ghosts is actually the work of men, while a person who looks perfectly ordinary might actually be a ghost.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GROUP POWER WORKSHOP
Kwang tells the story of Jack (Eason Chan), who marries Mak Ching (Jo Koo), a woman he discovers he knows very little about but who has selflessly helped him through a difficult period and who "finds" the money to pay for a new apartment after they marry. When Jack gets hit by a car, Mak makes a deal with a spirit at a small shrine she finds in a back alley that she will give her life to the spirit in exchange for his. Jack makes a miraculous recovery, but then the spirit starts demanding her price. Jack becomes suspicious of his wife's past and with his niece, who is both more and less than she seems, starts investigating her. The spirit confuses matters by occasionally possessing Ching Mak in an effort to get her to join her in the spirit world. The intricacies of the plot are difficult to follow, but there is a kind of atmospheric integrity to the work that allows you to accept some pretty stupendous logical leaps.
The idyllic married life between Jack and Mak is well set up, and is the emotional background against which the creepy possessions and mistrust are set. This is the film's main strength. The relationship between the couple and a member of the spirit world has echoes of Rouge(胭脂扣), Stanley Kwan's (關錦鵬) 1987 film, which is still one of the classics of this genre. The vision in Visible Secret is darker, and the world that Kwang sketches, one that exists on the edge of our perceptions claiming its due, provides a gentle tingle of recognition. Jo Koo's performance is also a pleasure to watch, managing the switches between the extremes of domestic bliss to a possessed body with conviction.
Visible Secret II is not about to take the cinema world by storm, but is solid entertainment providing a generous helping of thrills, good acting and creative thinking on the part of the creators. Can you really ask for more?
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