Scarred Memory
Director: Ray Leung
Year: 1996
Rating: 6.0
Veronica Yip is best known
for her Cat 3 appearances in films like Take Me, Hidden Desire, Pretty Woman
and a few others. She was beautiful, well-figured and not shy. But along
the way, she learned how to act and by the time she retired in 1996 and married
rich, she had some fine performances on her resume - Red Rose White Rose,
Law on the Brink, A Roof with a View and certainly this film that she dominates
with a give it all she has performance. She goes through hell. And survives.
Barely. She matches up against Simon Yam giving one of his better early performances
that is heroic, villainous and tragic. The film is a real mix of exploitation
and melodrama, of healing and romance. Of scars that won't go away. Way too
many coincidences and much too overwrought with a gang fight at the end to
the swelling music of Swan Lake, but it still resonates.
The beginning from director Ray Leung (in
his only film) appears to be heading towards another Cat 3 Yip shows it all
narrative as she seduces her boyfriend (Gilbert Lam) only to have her stop
short just as he was rising to the occasion. In a confused meandering flashback,
she pictures the time she was raped by a thug played by slimeball Peter Ngor,
who when he wasn't acting was one of Hong Kong's top cinematographers -
C'est La Vie, Mon Cherie, My Young Auntie, Legendary Weapons of China, Mr.
Vampire, Shanghai Blues, Full Contact, Wolf Warriors. But he almost always
plays a rotter, I expect because of his mean looking face. Eventually,
her boyfriend cheats on her and in a bad mental state, at the hospital she
messes up when a man is brought in beaten to hell. When he recovers, he is
mentally impaired. She leaves her job as a doctor and moves to Macau to room
with a friend (Farini Cheung) and becomes a party girl.
Till she sees an opportunity for redemption.
The patient she damaged due to poor care is in Macau with his mother. He
is the village idiot with kids throwing things at him. She is determined
to make him better. But it doesn't entirely turn into a sob story of his
recovery. Because as Lung (Simon Yam) gets better, his memories begin to
return and he begins to realize all the awful things he did in the past.
He was a gangster, a killer, an enforcer, an arsonist - an all-around bad
guy. And he owes a triad boss money from before and guess who is looking
to kill him? Of course, Peter Ngor. It's a small world. Two good performances,
an absurd over the top plot and some snazzy camera work makes this a solid
film. Almen Wong is in it as one of the nurses at the hospital a few years
before Her Name is Cat.
