Scorpio (1996)
Reviewed by: Brian Thibodeau on 2007-03-15
Eager to hook up with the enigmatic, sex-hungry bombshell (Gung Suet-fa) he meets at his rich aunt’s funeral and chases around to swimming pools and restaurants like a lonely puppy, and less than eager to have to split his sizable new inheritance with his mousy, dutiful wife (Catherine Hung Yan) in the inevitable divorce, businessman Ng Wai-kwok hires young lothario Sunny Chan to romance his wife so an incriminating video can be shot. As expected, Chan and Hung fall in love for real. But it’s the two men Ng hires for the surveillance work who appear to be this film’s raison d’etre: nasty—but bang-on—caricatures of pretentious auteur Wong Kar-wai (here a self-possessed artiste in sunglasses called Tall Guy Wong) and populist panderer Wong Jing (here a corpulent pervert named Fatty Jing), with the former’s saturated images and lush musical stylings and the latter’s tendency toward circuitous plotting and moments of lowbrow humour getting kicked around with barely-disguised contempt as if to prove that, hey, anybody can do it! Ironically, the film actually benefits as a result, looking quite stylish and unfurling at a nimble pace, although the point of such an exercise will ultimately be lost on most viewers. One knowingly ridiculous underwater sex scene is set to an orgasmically heaving pop ballad sung by Gung Suet-fa.
Reviewer Score: 5