Prince of tears

Hunan-born Yonfan (aka Yeung Fan) holds a special place in Hong Kong's film industry. Best known as a photographer (first; cinematographer second) enchanted by natural and human beauty, colourful settings and romantic messages, he's been a highly distinctive director, an auteur sans equal since 1970 (when he was 23).

His latest (2009) melodrama, Prince of Tears, tells tearful tales of Republican Taiwan during its early years of anti-Communist paranoia and injustices. Somehow, it was nominated as the official Hong Kong entry for that year's Oscar for best foreign-language movie, despite being a Taiwan production and story with much post-production work done in Bangkok. The movie also competed (and also unsuccessfully) at the 2009 Venice film festival.

Yonfan once won a Best Film award, at the 1998 Milan International Lesbian and Gay festival, for Bishonen, his melodramatic overview of gigolos in Hong Kong. I recall going to watch it at the Central's original, large Queen's cinema, and being the only audience member. Yonfan had hired the place for a week (presumably to qualify for competitions requiring public exhibition), hung velvet drapes in the lobby, and produced a lavish souvenir booklet. He clearly had access to large funds.

Presumably, he still does: the executive producer for his latest movie is indie auteur and multi-award-winning writer-director Fruit Chan. Yonfan, as usual, wrote his own screenplay and created his own art designs. He also uttered the narrative notes that ensure the audience knows about plot points and ironies in the moodily mournful story about two young girls whose parents are arrested and imprisoned as suspected spies for the PRC. Their handsome father (Joseph Chang) is an airforce pilot who plays the accordion and loves Slavic music; their beautiful mother (mainland newcomer Zhu Xuan) cooks lovely meals.

Together with them in the charming rustic accommodation and leafy lanes of a Taiwan air base in 1954 are a moody limping military friend with a scarred face (Fan Chih-wei) and an even more beautiful mystery woman (Terry Kwan), the wife of a KMT general (veteran Kenneth Die Another Day Tsang). Their young daughter is a schoolmate of one of the pilot's girls. All will not end prettily, we soon realise in the movie, when a girl's favourite teacher is arrested for espionage, unwisely painting glorious coastal scenery amid exquisitely-hued wind-rustled vegetation in a military zone, and is thrown off the cliff in a bag.

The movie shows the father being executed too, although he reappears at the end of the film. By then we've learned that the oldest child had a different father, her mother had some sort of eye-flashing love affair with the general's wife, who was some sort of agent for something. Yonfan's dreamy (and beautifully dreary) script floats very prettily, but illogically. His end credits state that it was based on a real Taiwan family which experienced similar melodramatics and produced one of the island's better-known (and unidentified) actresses.

Sadly, another Yonfan creation wastes lots of good actors, technical talent and money, albeit prettily.