What a bitter taste this film left in my mouth. Not a result of a well crafted film, but of the underlying incoherence of its storyline. It has a touch of the sadomasochistic relationship in Fellini’s La Strada, but without the character development and romantic cushion which creates some level of plausibility.

In 1938, a group of young students, brought together by Kuang Yu Min and the patriotic play he directs, draw up an assassination plot against Mr. Yee, a high-level Chinese politician who is collaborating with the Japanese. After becoming the theatre group’s leading actress, Wong Chia Chi, a first year student, shy and unsure of herself, agrees to become Mrs. Mak, a sophisticated, rich and daring woman who is introduced into a high-society group who convene at the Yee household.

A year after the Yee’s sudden departure for Hong Kong, Kuang finds Wong and asks her to become Mrs. Mak once again. An undercurrent of unspoken attraction draws Kuang and Wong together throughout the film, which is later shattered. Whilst saying he will never let anyone harm her, he is responsible for drawing her back into the violent and destructive role which slowly shatters any remnant of identity she ever had.

She becomes Mr. Yee’s mistress and enters into a violent, predominantly sexual, relationship. She becomes Mr. Yee’s doorway to a world of feeling and passion which he cannot disentangle from the violent repression of resistance groups which has becomes his life. An extremely cautious man, who has survived various assassination plots which involved his female lovers, Mr. Yee begins to relax with Mrs. Mak and allows his emotions, unruly and chaotic, to lash out.

The film pushes Wong’s role until it reaches a fatal breaking point, and this narrative climax takes place on flimsily scripted ground, when Mr. Yee uncharacteristically lets down his guard and decides to accompany Mrs. Mak to collect an extravagant ring she has chosen as his gift. A warped romantic phrase, “Gems do no interest me, I just want to see it on your hand” trigger Wong’s character to break.

A deeply male-chauvinist story which follows the creation of a character and the destruction of its player’s identity. The culminating scene pivots around the main character’s weakness in the face of a 6 carat jewel and a few awkward emotions.

It seems that the aim of the film is to show the fragility of resistance fighters and how their lost and broken personalities lead them to act upon sudden irrational desires. At the same time, it focuses on the way in which a woman has had to annihilate herself, physically and mentally, for a cause which she does not really understand. Despite the film’s cinematographic mastery and the solid cast, the story-line is incoherent, the character development shallow and the denouement disappointingly misguided.