The Bride With White Hair.
Part 1:
Directed - Ronnie Yu, Action - Kuo Choy (1993).
Stars - Leslie Cheung, Brigette Lin, Francis Ng.
Wow. Wu Tang and the 7 other sects vs. evil cult of foreigners. Leslie plays a swordsman from Wu Tang and Brigette is an assasin for the others. They fall in love, which causes trouble obviously. I must admit this was the 3rd time I had tried to watch this, not being able to ge t past the first 15 mins. Lin's entrance grabbed me instantly and from then on I was completely transfixed. Awesome. The photography was glorious, the acting was brilliant, tastefully erotic love scenes and the other type of action was also mind blowing (don't expect any down to earth KF or the regular style of wire work. Don't expect anything just watch.) The atmosphere created Ronnie Yu's photography was very dark and eery. Brigette Lin bathing under a waterfall will have the lads putting holes in the roof. I was expecting a Chinese Ghost Story type thing, but I have to say I enjoyed this more, even though I'm a big fan of Ching Siu Tung's series. I was straight down the video shop for the sequel. One of my favourite HK movies of all time - 10/10
Part 2:
Director - David Wu (1993)
Produced by Ronnie Yu.
Stars - Brigette Lin, Christy Chung, Sunny Chan, Lily Chung, Leslie Cheung.
Not a bad sequel to the extraordinary original. Ronnie Yu doesn't direct, but takes a back seat as producer in this one to a relatively novice Director, David Wu. However, his influence on the production is evidently strong, with some lovely mise-en-scene photography, ever so apparent in Pt1. What annoyed me was the 1 dimensional depiction of Brigette Lin's character, who until the end is just portrayed as plain evil. She's on an all out mission to destroy all members of the 8 clans and also seems to have women cease the trend of a mal e dominated world (god forbid). Christy Chung is delightful as the reefer roking tomboy Moon, who is out to help Kit (Sunny Chan) rescue his wife from the BWWH (Lin.) Leslie Cheung's role is reduced to cameo status, but dominates the screen completely with his entrance and you forget about the new characters and seem to be watching part 1 again. I really would have liked to have seen more than 5 minutes shared screen time between the 2 main characters of the films, as they were superb in the original. That's not a spoiler, either, it's a warning to those expecting as I was, a continuation of the first part. Instead, they've introduced some new characters who carry the film nicely. Battle of the Sexes would have been appropriate title for this flick (if you've seen it, you'll know what I mean). If I sound critical, I don't know why, because this was a great film and I'd recommend it highly, but check no.1 first, because it's the bollox. 8/10
