Rouge opens in a long-vanquished world: the banqueting rooms and ‘flower houses’ of Hong Kong’s Western District in the ’30s, a world of opulent decadence where all kinds of sensual pleasures are indulged. Fleur is the perfect creature of this world, an expensive ‘flower girl’ first seen dressed as a man and singing a man’s lament for his lost courtesan. The film’s weak-willed hero naturally falls for her the moment he hears her smoky basso profundo. As the film goes on, it cuts back and forth between this lacquered world and present-day Hong Kong, not only noticing the inconceivable changes that have overtaken the city but wryly observing that the idea of dying for love has gone out of fashion. The film’s intricate time-frame finesses not only a moving and original ghost story but also Kwan’s sophisticated reflections on what society loses and gains as time goes by. Tony Rayns
