Hong Kong is a tough place to crack. Like New
York City, if you can make it in Hong Kong you can make it anywhere. This
is especially the case if you are a young innocent school girl coming from
the Mainland to make a go of it. And even more so if you happen to be endowed
like a piñata at a sweet sixteen birthday and the target of every
lustful man in the city. Chow Ying (Isabelle Chow) arrives in Hong Kong
by train from Beijing (to the tuneful ditty of “I Was Born in Beijing”)
with stars in her eyes and optimism in her heart. She is going to stay
with her Grand Uncle – but within a few days all her dreams are debris
along the road – they have porno sitting in her room to watch (not that
she seems to mind actually), one of her relatives is having sex by the
poolside, another relative tries to molest her, she moves out to a small
apartment where a tenant peeps on her in the communal shower, in a store
where she finds work the manager (Leung Gam-san) tries to rape her and
when that doesn’t work she is framed for theft and fired. Ya, Hong Kong
is a tough town. But the tough bounce back.
Chow Ying finds a port of call with a sympathetic
male friend but he is just a psycho in waiting and has a nasty habit of
secretly videotaping his bed time reading. He tells Ying that she is his
forever and can never leave – just the words she needs to hear . . . to
get the hell out as quickly and quietly as she can. From here though it
is all up – she gets a job as an insurance saleswoman but is unable to
sell a single policy until she runs into an acquaintance from her home
town – Fung (Pauline Chan) who seems to have made a success of it in Hong
Kong. How? The old fashioned way – she “makes use of my gifted body” but
she tells Ying not to get the wrong idea – she is no prostitute because
she only keeps company twice a night! Interesting distinction. But she
gives Ying good advice – if you want to sell, use your sex appeal and soon
Ying is going up in the top of the insurance pops. But that is chicken
feed compared to how she does when she meets an old customer (Leung Hah-shun)
from her first job – an elderly man that none of the other clerks would
help and she did – he turns out to remember her and to be head of a giant
conglomerate and within two minutes of meeting her switches all the company’s
insurance needs over to her. And she turns her body over to him. Complications
ensue – but where there is a will there is a way to deal with old blackmailing
boyfriends.
The only real reason to watch this film is
to drool at the delights of Isabelle Chow, but it’s a darn good reason.
She is a knockout. She has a beautiful clean cut impish face and a body
that as the saying goes “dreams are made of”. And she shows lots of it.
She first gained some Cat III notoriety with Sex and Zen in 1991 alongside
a woman and a lucky flute and then appeared in a few other Cat III films
– a couple non-Cat III films – and disappeared from the film scene. It
is all mystifying. Why did she get into Cat III films and where did she
go so quickly? My guess is she found a husband, but I can’t find out anything
substantial about her on the Internet, so if any one knows let me know.
And just for strictly information purposes, Pauline’s role is fairly small
with only one quick jump in bed scene where her assets are momentarily
visible.
My rating for this film: 5.0