Viva Erotica Revisited

I was flipping through the cable channels when i got home tonight - Stars had a bunch of good movies on in a row... they showed 'Rob-B-Hood', then ' Divergence' and finally 'Viva Erotica',  Derek Yee and Law Chi-Leung's 1996 classic. 

I had seen ' Viva Erotica' on vhs back in the day (probably 10 years ago or so), and I remembered that it was pretty good and also of course that it was Hsu Chi's breakthrough role...  it turned her from a porno actress into an award winning mainstream actress in one film!  (probably helped by the fact that her role in the movie was that of a porno actress!) 

For those who aren't familiar with the movie, its about a director who is forced to work on a category 3 movie (aka porno) because his last two artistic films have flopped. The triad boss who is financing the film forces him to include his uncooperative girlfriend as the lead actress...  He is faced with the realities of a declining taste in films and the challenge to an artist's creative vision in a business environment like commercial film making.

Watching it again now in 2007, I appreciated it a lot..  especially now that I live in HK and know a bit more about the HK film industry -- i got a little more of the subtext and what not.  Its also more striking now that Leslie Cheung is no longer alive.  There's even one eerie scene where he discusses committing suicide...  (Derek Yee put a character in the movie, a director named 'Derek Yee' played by Lau Ching-wan who commits suicide after getting bad reviews for his latest movie, Leslie Cheung suggests he should do the same).

Anyway,  watching this film a second time reaffirms my belief that anything Yee does is worth watching... and even though  they cut out a lot of the 'erotica' part of 'Viva Erotica'  in order to be allowed to show it on TV, it was still enjoyable. Elvis Tsui's role in the film is underappreciated because everyone always talks about Hsu Chi, but thats cause she's hot! :-P