Very enjoyable movie, with particularly good performances from Leslie Cheung
and Takako Tokiwa. The movie rests squarely upon her shoulders, and she does admirably well.
Now for the caveat...I have to agree with a previous reviewer who had harsh words
for some of the songs in the movie. It has become a bit of a bore having to mention that a soundtrack should first and foremost serve the film it appears in, rather than
intrude so badly that it all but wrecks the flow of the story....rather like a tedious Disney exercise in formulaic fodder. The songs were so grating and obtrusive that
one was forced to wonder upon whose lap should the extreme lapse in good taste be
placed...because certainly, the rest of the film was a lot more sure footed in execution.
Not to be too down on Henry Lai, because the instrumental pieces, particularly the
'main' theme ( Hitomi's theme ), captured a proper balance of sweetness and melancholy...BUT the songs, particularly 'Flame In My Heart', both grated and embarrassed me. It was as if I had to re-live ABBA's 'english-as-a-second-language'
amateurish lyrics and diction all over again.
AND, as if to add further insult to injury, just as the last bits of the flashback coda
fade away, with the wonderful 'music box' theme just adding the right bit of sweetening to the whole scene and our senses lulled into the elegiac moment of their first meeting,we are jolted back into rude reality with the harsh bleatings of the 'song', when by any measure of good taste we should be allowed to savour the final few moments in relative silence. Rather like a bad case of coitus interruptus involving ice cubes , some cold metallic objects and a cattle prod.