The first in a string of noteworthy Lillian Lee adaptations filmmaker Stanley Kwan's "Rouge" is a surreal anxiety attack on celluloid that relies heavily on the captivating performance of lead Anita Mui and the arresting score by composers Michael Lai and Tang Siu-lam to inflate this critically lauded ghost picture.

Leslie Cheung is the eldest living son of prosperous shop owners who falls in love with the most coveted courtesan (Mui) of an affluent brothel in Hong Kong, circa 1934. The young master's parents naturally disapprove; freeze his cash flow, later forcing the would-be lovers into a suicide pact so their spirits can fuse in the afterlife. Decades later, the courtesan's ghost returns searching for the young master who apparently didn't expire. Her human counterparts are dullards Alex Man and Emily Chu who navigate the weakening ghost through 1987 Hong Kong in search of her true love (presumably still residing in the area).

Thankfully, Kwan eschews the nominal lynchpins of the fish-out-of-water narrative in contemporary Hong Kong though he flattens any semblance of context in the lovers' doomed union and his overuse of pretentious slow motion photography is exhausting.

Audiences may wonder if there was more to Lee's novel though the author is listed as one of two credited screen writers.