OCEAN FLAME

Hong Kong, 2008, 130 minutes, Colour.
Liao Fan, Monica Wang.
Directed by Liu Fen Dou.

We are back in the world of Hong Kong gangsters, the film an opening with a prisoner being released, who goes to meet up with characters from the past, helping one to die, and searching for the woman who was the love of his life but whom he treated shamefully. The film is a long flashback about what brought him to prison and his loss of the woman.

However, the first scene is an enigmatic beach scene with a boy counting numbers out loud and running away. By the time we come to the end of this rather long film, we are back at that scene which now makes sense and brings the film to a sad, grim conclusion.

While this gangster world is related to what we know from other Hong Kong films, Ocean Flame (the title is obscure) is set in a different milieu, a world of bars, of prostitution rackets, of blackmailing victims. The central character is at home in this world, not working for the money but because he really likes it. When he comes across a young woman who works at a bar, he falls for her and she for him. But, he has little finesse in expressing his emotions. He is so caught up in his work and expose of philandering husbands and blackmailing them, that he is suspicious, subjects the woman to some sado-masochistic behaviour, forcing her to participate in one of his set-ups and refusing to rescue her.

The film builds to a sad climax and death and prison.

While the film seems to meander at times and be repetitive, it does come together at the end.

1.The title, the ocean at the beginning and at the end? The ocean sequences?

2.The Hong Kong background, the enclosed world of the central characters, opening it up at the sea? The musical score?

3.Yao getting out of jail, finding the man with the gun on the pier, encountering the beggar, cleaning him up, killing him? The irony of his being his friend? Going to the mother and son, the questioning?

4.The film as flashback, Yao’s story? Revealing himself, his evil, his relationship with Li Chuan?

5.Yao as a racketeer, the gang, the police watching, the relationship with Stick and the bashing at the bar, seeing Li Chuan at the bar – and her later returning to Stick? The set-up, working with his friend, the hotels, the blackmail of the men, his command of the girls, the money? The repeating of this kind of scam? His wanting to be a gangster not for the money but because he liked it?

6.Li Chuan and the bar, her attraction to Yao, following him, the beach sequences, the sexual relationship, the episode of being buried in the sand and getting out? His brutality towards her, her sensitivity? Yao using Li Chuan in one of his scams, the experience for her, her shock, his not rescuing her in time? Her leaving him, going back to him? His saying that he loved her – but only saying this because she wanted him to? Her despising of him? His friend, the support from the friend? The decision to marry the friend, the ceremony, Yao and his dancing, sleep – and not knowing what went on? His arrest?

7.The friend, his working with Yao, the scam, his relationship with Li Chuan, the bond with her, the other girls, the marriage, the night, escaping out the window, his injury?

8.Li Chuan and her motives for the wedding, going to Yao, killing herself in the bath, the blood?

9.The criminal world and the insights?

10.The mother giving the ashes to Yao?

11.His going to the beach, burying himself once again with the ashes, the boy counting? The full circle from the beginning of the film?