Amphetamine
Is true love possible for those who are incapable but so desiring of it?
97'
Hong Kong
IFFR 2024
Even if in Love Actually... Sucks! Scud interlaces stories of love and relationships, it becomes immediately apparent that this film bears no easy relationship to Richard Curtis' 2003 film. As is made clear by the lashings of nudity and sex and a guy wandering along the coast, carrying his lover’s decapitated head. Inspired by six real-life court cases in Hong Kong, the film is a unique existential romance about love that has gone bad, illustrating how love can kind of suck, whilst giving a toast to unconventional love too.
Siblings express their mutual love a little too affectionately, a wedding is spoiled, a married painter has a crush on his male model, a dance school teacher dances more than tango with his student, a lesbian couple have a role-playing issue and an unlucky love triangle ends with death and decapitation. The second of two collaborations with Hong Kong Herman Yau as the cinematographer, Love Actually… Sucks! oscillates between Decameron and Kaidan, mixing erotica with crime. While the film and love, are to be taken seriously, Scud’s insistence on keeping it real, his candour and his uncanny eye for singular imagery crackles with unexpected humour.
– kijA
IFFR 2024
Programme IFFR 2024
When reflecting on Scud’s body of work Louboutin’s “Heels are pleasure with pain,” comes to mind – the two permeate all his films. Audacious, passionate, cruel, loving and consistently stubborn, Scud strips his soul by stripping beautiful men, leaving them naked and vulnerable, wandering between the realms of absolute pleasure, sensual daydreams and nightmares. As well as pondering the meaning and value of life, death and thereafter. With Naked Nations – Tribe Hong Kong, the Hong Kong artist provocateur says his goodbye to filmmaking, leaving behind ten stand-alone films that form one relentless and singular work of art.
Did you know that Scud is also joining us for a Talk this year? Find out more via the button below.
Read more about this programmeIs true love possible for those who are incapable but so desiring of it?
97'
Hong Kong
IFFR 2024
Apostles reflect on the meaning and value of life by exploring myth, karma and death.
82'
Hong Kong
IFFR 2024
A camp and subversive mosaic of love, sex, death and defiance from Hongkongese provocateur Scud.
89'
Hong Kong
IFFR 2024