Hong Kong

Inner Senses (Lo Chi-leung 2002)

An observation in Encyclopedia of Chinese Film summarises the ghost movie tradition in the Hong Kong cinema:

INNER SENSES belongs in this tradition as a ghost melodrama, like ROUGE. In addition, Leslie Cheung plays the hero, as he does in both ROUGE and A CHINESE GHOST STORY. Cheung was a top Hong Kong star, and INNER SENSES was his last film before his suicide at the age of 46.

The script of INNER SENSES was a collaborative effort: Yeung Sin-ling wrote the story; Yeung, Lo and the film's producer Derek Yee wrote the screenplay. And although Lo Chi-leung has in fact said, ‘ROUGE never crossed my mind’ (Lee 2002: 81), Rouge is such a well-known film, it is entirely possible that it unconsciously influenced the filmmakers. INNER SENSES is like Rouge not just as a ghost melodrama, but also because it refers both to the period when it was made and to Hong Kong's history – unlike most Hong Kong scary ghost movies which are set in a mythical past. A brief look at ROUGE would accordingly be useful.

ROUGE begins in the Hong Kong of 1934, with a doomed love affair between an elegant courtesan Fleur (Anita Mui) and Chen-Pang (Cheung), the son of a wealthy family. Chen-Pang's family refuse to let him marry Fleur, and so Fleur persuades a somewhat reluctant Chen-Pang to commit double suicide. Fleur as a ghost then turns up in the Hong Kong of 1987: she is seeking Chen-Pang, whom she has been unable to find in the afterlife. Two young journalists, Yuen (Alex Man) and his girlfriend Ah Chor (Emily Chu), assist Fleur in her search, and eventually they discover that, despite taking the same drugs as Fleur, Chen-Pang did not die.