Orchid in the Rain
Reviewed by YTSL
“If my memory of her has an expiration date,
let it be 10,000 years...” So goes the quote that has a prominent
place on the “Chungking Express” postcard that’s on my refrigerator door,
and that I reckon is meant to refer to the actress whose last film appearance
was in that 1994 Wong Kar Wai work as well as the blonde wigged woman who
she essayed in it. In any event, it occurred to me when recently
viewing an earlier effort in which Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia also appeared
that many of the characters that she portrayed in her distinguished career
have had the sort of powerful impact on people that makes it so that they
are inclined to believe -- like with this 1977 Taiwanese movie’s male protagonist
-- that “I can’t forget her” and “she begins to creep into my heart” plus
be moved to openly declare to her that “I just want your love”.
The full blown weepie that is ORCHID IN THE RAIN
opens with a shot of an individual gunning his red, open topped sports
car along a lonely, winding road that turns out to lead to an institution
run by a Roman Catholic order. From the conversation that he (who
is played by Alan Tang and gets named as Cheng Yang) has there with one
of the Sisters (Ouyang Shafei) who work at the place, the information gets
gleaned re the establishment’s being a mental asylum (rather than a Convent,
as I had initially suspected). Also, that a female patient of it
who was identified as suffering from “serious hysteria” -- and that the
nun confided to the visitor that she was most concerned about plus pitied
the most -- is someone whose troubled state the upset looking young man
feels that he has caused to come about.
As revealed via flashbacks, the (now) psychologically
disturbed woman in question is someone who Cheng Yang had first set eyes
on -- and was instantly smitten by -- at the entrance to a boat terminal
one fateful night after this scion of a wealthy family had left a party
hosted by a cousin of his. Even without being as glamorously dressed
for the evening as she in fact was, Shu Chiu Meng undoubtedly would have
grabbed the eligible bachelor’s particular fancy (on account of her coming
in the form of none other than Brigitte Lin -- i.e., the charismatic individual
nicknamed “Wondrous Beauty” by the Chinese entertainment news media).
As it was, despite a less than happy looking -- but, nonetheless, still
visually stunning -- her spurning his romantic overtures on that occasion,
the art student could not help but spend a significant amount of time afterwards
thinking of she who had refused to even tell him her name plus ordered
him not to try to figure out where she lived as well as had been disinclined
to accept outright his offer to pay her ferry fare (and in enough detail
as to be able to paint a portrait of this mystery femme from memory).
As luck would have it, Chiu Meng turned out to
be employed at the art design shop that Cheng Yang visited one day.
Although the still less than forthcoming female initially tried to pretend
that she didn’t know the excited fellow, she ended up having to admit that
they had indeed met before. Also, while Chiu Meng continued to be
reluctant to tell the persistent Cheng Yang her name, he was able to learn
it this time due to it being emblazoned on a sign on her desk at work.
Despite her issuing such warnings to him as “I will make you hopeless”,
the besotted fellow just would and could not be dissuaded from his romantic
pursuit of the close to heartstoppingly gorgeous lass. About one
third into ORCHID IN THE RAIN, proof is provided of Cheng Yang having managed
to at least temporarily get his way. By this, I mean that this largely
melodramatic offering’s viewers are treated to the kind of happy plus loving
scenes -- including one filmed in silhouette and slow motion -- that probably
were successful in touching the hearts of movie audiences some two and
half decades ago but, if truth be told, caused this contemporary (re)viewer
to burst into near hysterical laughter instead.
Thanks in some part, however, to the previously
taciturn Chiu Meng’s disclosing to Cheng Yang (on the first birthday that
she celebrated post becoming his girlfriend) that she formerly was a bar
girl, and his -- disappointingly, to my mind -- seeming to agree that this
made her “dirty” and less “innocent” than him (even though her reason for
being in that line of work was so that she could support her mentally incompetent
father, seriously ill mother and school going younger sister), the laughs
soon disappear from this couple’s relationship and ORCHID IN THE RAIN as
a whole. Worse was to follow with the entrance into the picture of
a man from Chiu Meng’s past named Lo Piao who damningly claimed, among
other things, that he and she had lived together before she abruptly walked
out on him. Despite this individual’s looking extremely sleazy plus
shady, the terribly naive Cheng Yang believed Lo Piao when the obvious
slime ball asserted that he loved Chiu Meng (And this even while he was
eager enough to tell others that “she is the darkest woman”).
In light of what was shown earlier in ORCHID IN
THE RAIN, the trajectory -- even if not precise details -- of the sequence
of events that follow Cheng Yang and Lo Piao’s confrontation turned discussion,
followed by an actual agreement, is one that ought to be fairly easy to
predict. Ditto, especially in light of what the audience were shown
earlier in the film, re the negative consequences and effects that it was
to have on Chiu Meng. Under normal circumstances, this state of affairs
would cause a movie to drop many notches in my estimation. Since
the ultimately quite involving effort’s expected turn towards the extra
dramatic allowed my favorite actress to show that she already possessed
an impressive expressive range early in her career however, this is one
of those times that I think that it all just might have been for the best.
My rating for this film: 6.