Made in Heaven
Made in Heaven
Director: Alex Cheung
Year: 1997
Rating: 5.5
This film fuses elements of the supernatural and gangsters into a moderately
enjoyable mélange that bounces back and forth between the comedic and
the dramatic like a yellow ping pong ball in play. This was the sort of film
back in the late 90’s that popped into a theater for a week or so and then
went to VCD the next day and was soon forgotten thereafter. Low on movie
star voltage, it didn’t really have much of a chance to begin with but it
has a charm about it that is very low key and rather difficult to understand.
Much of it I suppose has to do with the appealing calming presence of Ada
Choi.
Ada Choi has always been a big TV star, but around this time she made a
play to be a film star with leading roles in good films such as The Golden
Girls, Chinese Odyssey and Once Upon a Time in Triad Society II. But she
ran into the buzz saw of a faltering film industry that had suddenly lost
its magic and even though some of the films that Ada continued to be in such
as Casino, Your Place or Mine and The Suspect were high profile films, they
were high profile films in a low profile disintegrating film industry. Here
in Made in Heaven she plays a meek soul on a run of bad luck.
The film begins in heaven where recent inductees’ - i.e. dead people - are
being judged and sentenced to their next reincarnated life. A thief is before
the panel and he is told that in his next life he will come back as a woman
that will have no luck in love. Or as the film eloquently states “will be
in deep shit” if she loves anyone. This person turns out to be Lily Wong (Ada
Choi) who through a strange mix-up in heaven acquires the ability to have
premonitions about people who are going to soon die. First up is her father
and then her mom takes a powder and Lily is brought up in an orphanage.
In a waitress job, Lily runs into triad boss Brother Fung Wen (Michael Tong)
who has lost his taste for food but not for women as his moll is the delectable
Sister Sheila played by Diana Pang Dan who yet again shows us a few kung fu
moves as she did in Brother Forever. Who would have known? Though young and
handsome Brother Fung isn’t all that nice and at one point forces a betrayer
to have sex with a prostitute with AIDS and as his men haul the fellow off
yells “and make sure he uses no condom”. I think that was passing here for
humor but hard to say.
Later he saves Lily from being raped for her virginity after being set up
by a guy she thought was in love with her and Lily returns the favor by warning
Brother Fung to beware of the “dragon” which saves his life. The film though
is all over the place with Lily getting a job as an insurance agent and selling
policies only to people that she senses are soon going to die and having a
pharmacist Dr. Law (Law Kar-ying) fall in love with her and then go crazy.
But Brother Fung is also falling in love and mending his ways and Sister Sheila
does not take kindly to this intrusion into the matters of the heart and
money.
Viewed on VCD
