By Love Obsessed
If ever you decide to explore the Taiwanese work
of Brigitte Lin, this very odd and enigmatic film would not be a very good
place to start. It’s quite confusing (though subs falling below my TV screen
didn’t help certainly), badly edited, but worst of all only has Brigitte
on an intermittent basis. She disappears for long stretches of this film.
What the film does have though is perhaps one of Brigitte’s longest kisses,
also an underwater kiss, a song from her and a bit of dancing!
A photographer (Chin Han - who also directed
this mess) goes to the beach to take some pictures and into his viewfinder
comes a woman dressed all in white doing a whirling dervish of a dance
on the hillside. Like a fairy she appears enchanted as she nearly floats
across the landscape. Chin chases her into the forest, but loses her trail.
When he gets back to Taipei, he develops the photos and becomes obsessed
with finding her once again. He breaks off with his girlfriend and goes
back to the beach where she appears magically in the firelight. She kisses
him deeply, madly – but then disappears again into the darkness. Dogs howl
in the distance. Much of this and the rest of the film is annoyingly played
out with a piano clanging out various Carly Simon tunes.
These mysterious going ons continue until finally
Chin learns that people are trying to keep him and Brigitte apart – and
the two of them run off into the wilderness and set up home in a cave.
All seems quite lovely for a while as they catch fish and frolic in the
water – but Brigitte’s past is catching up with them.
This is probably the weakest of the Taiwanese
Brigitte films that I have seen – all absurd melodrama with little heart
or sense. Still there was that kiss!
My rating for this film: 3.5