Rouge

A beguiling ghost story about a 1930s courtesan who appears in 1980s Hong Kong in search of a lost love.

In 1930s Hong Kong, Fleur (Anita Mui), a sought-after courtesan, meets and falls in love with Chen-Pang (Leslie Cheung), the son of a rich industrialist who secretly yearns to become an actor. When the doomed lovers encounter resistance from Chen-Pang's disapproving parents, the pair carry out a suicide pact. Flash forward to 1980s Hong Kong and Fleur mysteriously appears at a newspaper office, where she enlists the help of two journalists in placing an ad to locate Chen-Pang. The pair take the bewildered Fleur around her old neighbourhood, visiting old haunts that have now faded into the distant past.

Curator's note
Stanley Kwan's sensuous ghost story plays with two different kinds of haunting. On one hand we have our ghostly protagonist, searching for a lost love who may or may not have passed over. On the other, the city of Hong Kong itself is haunted by the spectre of the past and its uncertain future. Released in the same year as the seminal A Chinese Ghost Story (also starring Leslie Cheung), Rouge takes a different tack, offering a melancholy nod to the cinema of the past and a Hong Kong that no longer exists.