wong kar wai's wu xia film, although it owes more to westerns and samurai films, than it does to other hong kong offerings. the film is typically beautiful thanks to christopher doyle, but the print on the mei ah dvd is dreadful; let's hope that the wong supervised transfer (that was talked about last year) will finally emerge.

dealing with wongs usual themes of love and memory, the film focuses on leslie cheung; a cynical character who lives in the desert arranging murders for those that have the money. in a series of vignettes, a variety of characters pass through cheung's home or his memories...

brigette lin, tony leung (ka fai), tony leung (chui wai), charlie yeung, jacky cheung, carina lau and maggie cheung make up an all star supporting cast (although where was joey wong?), each coming into leslie cheungs life and, seemingly, leaving it just as quickly...

the stylised swordplay may not be for everyone's taste but, as exercises in the choreography of colour and movement, they work very well (even though it may seem slightly sacriligious to obscure sammo hung's choreography as such).

very good, but let's have a decent dvd sooner, rather than later...