Women of Desire
Director: Lui Kei
Year: 1974
Rating: 4.5
The trailer for this
1974 Shaw Brothers film looked kind of naughty and with a title like “Women
of Desire” I expected there would be some racy fun and games within, but
it turns out that on the titillation scale this was on level with a night
out with Al Gore – and as with most politicians there was lots of promise
but in the end no execution. For the most part in fact, this was a dull trudge
that made staying awake a chore. It’s a shame because it begins enjoyably
enough with a big nightclub scene that has a few songs, some intrigues and
hints of things to come, but it just never goes anywhere interesting after
that.
It may be a possibility – though I don’t know, as I have never seen any other
version of this film – that this version may be slightly edited and that
some of the more risqué scenes were cut out if only slightly. There
have been a few other Celestial releases in which this seemed to be a possibility
– Human Lanterns and Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan – but all
evidence seems to point to this not being done by Celestial but simply due
to the print they received for the DVD mastering. Shaw Brothers often used
to make a few versions of their exploitation films in order to meet community
standards in differing markets in South East Asia. I only think this may
be a possibility because the film is surprisingly bereft of nudity beyond
a brief glimpse – even though the film was marketed as a sexy tale and it
stars Chen Ping who was only too willing to display her charms in other films.
Beyond this there are a few instances in which the film looked to be abruptly
edited right on the verge of something interesting happening. Not that all
the nudity in the world would have helped this film, but it would have made
staying awake a lot easier!
Just trying to keep track of all the characters in this film is as complicated
as remembering the Roman Emperors post Nero (Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian
to get you started!) and one needs an AAA road map to figure out who is married
or going out with whom and who is sleeping with whom. The film becomes a
roundelay of couples jumping into bed with one another and after a while
those squirming bodies started all looking the same to me. The main problem
with the film is that it was in such a hurry to get the action started that
it never bothered to make any of the characters distinct or at all sympathetic.
In deed, by the end of the film you realize that this was intended as a morality
tale of sorts because nothing good comes of all this fooling around.
L
ets see if I can get this straight – why I bother I don’t know – but here
goes. In all begins as I said before in a nightclub where nearly all the
main characters are taking up space. Thankfully, the film identifies all
the actors as they are initially brought on. There is Maggie Li who is a
publicist for a slimy singer and she doesn’t really have a lot to do in this
film – but I mention her because she later went on to marry David Chiang
a few years later. Over a few tables is Chen Ping who is married to the creepy
Wang Jung – who explains to his friend the singer that having sex with Chen
is like “squeezing the fruit of all the juice”. Now oddly this isn’t registered
as a compliment, but as a complaint – because after being squeezed he has
no juice left to fool around. In particular, he wants to share his juice
with another singer – credited here as Elaine Chin Yen-ling but now known
better as Elaine Kam (the gun smuggler in Wild Search and the mother in Tempting
Heart). She doesn’t seem very interested in him though and so the friend
suggests that old fallback – knockout pills – and Wang assures him that he
never leaves home without them. In fact, everyone in this film seems to have
some sort of pre-Viagra chemical solution to either wield you unconscious
or make you horny. Chen Ping though it turns out is very interested in her
husband’s friend so there is clearly opportunity for mutual fruit squeezing
here.
Then there is sexy Tina Chin Fei who wears red flashy lipstick like a battle
ornament – even to sleep. She has a husband at home (Lui Kei, who also directed
this) but he is a cripple and so she has begun an affair with a stockbroker
who enjoys nibbling on her ear when he isn’t showing her how much she has
excited him in cheap hotel rooms. She seems to enjoy the hotel rooms primarily
for the vibrating beds. Throw into this rowdy mix Woo Fung who is a respectably
married doctor but is seduced by siren Wong Ping-ping with the help of some
of that love potion that she slips into his tea after he has changed into
a negligee and seven pairs of different colored panties. Of course, the fact
that she decorates her bedroom with stuffed toys and posters of naked women
should have clued Woo into realizing that something wasn't quite right here.
If you already own this film and have no intention of really watching it
– you at least have to go to the seduction scene and Woo Fung’s strip tease
– it is the only highlight of this film and is very funny. Of course, the
fact that a Woo Fung strip tease is the highlight in a film populated with
a number of attractive women may be more than a little scary to some!
With all this going on you would think that this might be fun, but it is
poorly paced and just feels so painfully slow. The film jumps so quickly
back and forth between different characters that you feel like you are on
a merry-go-round and none of the stories seem to really matter – it only
gets mildly interesting in the end when things start falling apart for everyone
and a lesson is taught to all of us about the evils of messing around! The
director Lui Kei has a very lengthy filmography as both an actor and as a
director – but his latter duties seemed to have been focused on films with
at least erotic titles – The Seductress, Sexy Career Girls, The Stud and
the Nymph, The Foxy Ladies, Starlets for Sale and Girls for Sale among many
others. I can’t say there is much here to want me to run down his other films
– but I have to give him credit for at least attempting to film things from
odd positions – he seems to love filming through lampshades, legs and circular
art to give his films a real avant-garde edge!
