My Pale Lover
1993
Director: Chow Jan-wing
Rating: 4.5
Viewed on DVD
This is an extremely harmless
and rather pointless exercise primarily interested in displaying numerous
women without their clothes on. Which in itself is not really a bad thing,
I admit. A plot may have helped but that was clearly more trouble than the
producers wanted to go to. Oddly, even though this was made shortly after
Yvonne Yung Hung’s Cat. III coming out party in Can’t Stop My Crazy Love
for You, she is about the only female in the film who doesn’t get too revealing
– having only a rather sedate, uninspired and generally covered love making
scene at the very end.
The film wastes no time in jumping into the sleaze as it opens with two topless
women gyrating on stage in a small squalid bar causing the patrons to have
nose bleeds in the fine tradition of Hong Kong comedies. The women (who are
apparently Thai from their language) then proceed to another long quaint
tradition – pulling razor blades out of hidden places and opening a beer
bottles with body parts that would make watching football at home on a Sunday
much more interesting. Nike (Chiu Wai) works in the bar as a bartender and
is involved in a relationship with the bouncer Dick (Gung Fei) and the two
of them have numerous sexual escapades involving masks, alley ways and slapping.
Other folks working in the bar are doing much the same sort of thing – one
amusing episode being when the owner thought he was having oral gratification
from his girl (Ying Siu-liu) under the desk only to finally realize she was
standing by the door and it was his pet dog doing the duties. At least that
passes for amusing in this film.
Across town, Nike’s friend Rose (Yvonne) is a psychiatrist with a motley
group of clients with sexual issues. One of them is an obsessed suitor who
hates cats and attacks her stuffed Garfield toy. For some reason not quite
explained, the two women switch jobs and lives – Rose begins serving drinks
in the bar and Nike begins counseling men, often naked as is the nurse and
a bunch of other folks. Rose moves in with Dick and romance blooms. That
is the film in a big fat nutshell. Absolutely pointless but mildly entertaining
– kind of like an old episode of Love American Style with loads of simulated
sex and large bosoms.
My rating for this film: 4.5
