Rouge
Rouge
•
1h 38m
Directed by Stanley Kwan • 1987 • Hong Kong
Starring Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, Alex Man Chi-leung
Cantopop superstars Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung display the androgynous magnetism that made them icons as doomed lovers in this emblematic film of Hong Kong’s Second New Wave, directed by pioneering queer melodrama master Stanley Kwan. ROUGE bridges past and present in its tragic romance between a humble courtesan and the wayward scion of a wealthy family, who embrace death by suicide pact amid the opulent teahouses of 1930s Hong Kong. Fifty years later, she returns to the city-state to find him, drawing a young contemporary couple (Alex Man and Emily Chu) into her quest to rekindle a passion that may be as illusory as time itself. With its lush mise-en-scène and transcendently melancholy mood, this sensuous ghost story is an exquisite, enduringly resonant elegy for both lost love and vanishing history.
Up Next in Rouge
-
Stanley Kwan on ROUGE
This career-spanning interview with director Stanley Kwan conducted by his mentee, filmmaker Sasha Chuk, was recorded in Hong Kong in February 2022.
-
Still Love You After All These
Perhaps Stanley Kwan’s most experimental work, STILL LOVE YOU AFTER ALL THESE is a personal-memoir film about Hong Kong identity made in 1997, the year of the handover of Hong Kong from Great Britain to China. It was produced by Peggy Chiao.
-
Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema
Originally commissioned by the British Film Institute, this 1996 documentary by Stanley Kwan combines archival footage with interviews with filmmakers and actors such as Leslie Cheung, Ang Lee, Chen Kaige, and John Woo to explore representations of queerness and LGBT identity throughout the histo...
