DVD The Phantom Lover

Beautiful! Awesome!

When the bank threatens to foreclose upon the troupe after an unsuccessful performance, the young actor Wei, encounters the ghost of Sung Danping. Sung Danping (in the tradition of Phantom of the Opera), teaches him to sing. Can Wei save the opera house before the bank forecloses? And what about the mysterious Sun Danping?

Phantom Lover was partially inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'phantom of the opera' but I liked this one a lot better, because it was set in China, and Sung's love for Yuyan was eternal. The musical score was simply beautiful, and Wei was convincing as a young naive actor, down on his luck.

I recommend this movie for fans of Chinese romantic movies. You won't be disappointed!

"The Phantom Lover" arguably ranks alongside John Woo's "Bullet in the Head" (Dip Huet Gaai Tau, 1990) as one of the crowning achievements of Hong Kong cinema. With spectacular Gothic sets designed by the late Eddie Ma Poon-chiu and swooping camerawork by world-class cinematographer Peter Pau Tak-hei (whose expansive images demonstrate the full potential of the Panavision frame), this sublime masterpiece represents a sensational marriage of old-fashioned storytelling with cinematic technique. The fast-moving narrative is heightened constantly by director Yu's operatic filmmaking style, a style which he perfected two years earlier in his acclaimed fantasy "The Bride With White Hair" (Baak Faat Moh Nui Juen, 1993), providing a near-perfect combination of plot, characterization and technical virtuosity. The script (by Roy Szeto Cheuk-hon, Raymond Wong Pak-ming and director Yu) is essentially a reworking of "Midnight Song" (Ye Bang Ge Sheng, 1937), an early effort by pioneering Chinese horrormeister Maxu Weibang, though Yu's film emphasizes atmosphere and melodrama over outright horror, and the film's central section - the heartbreaking disintegration of Cheung's relationship with Wu - is played to perfection by an attractive cast, and nicely underscored by Chris Babida's melancholy score. The only false note is sounded by Cheung's contribution to the soundtrack, a handful of feeble songs which struggle unsuccessfully to convey an appropriate sense of heartache and tragedy. Such blatant insincerity may help to explain his less-than-flattering appraisal of the film since its initial release.

Overall, there are few Hong Kong films as deserving of a two-disc special edition as "The Phantom Lover", but Tai Seng's region-free DVD (which runs 101m 47s) is a mixed bag. Whereas the 'modern' sequences (set in 1936) should have been sepia-toned with splashes of color - a deliberate artistic choice by the filmmakers - this DVD drains them to the verge of near-total black-and-white, and the full-color flashbacks pale in comparison with earlier laserdisc/DVD editions from the Far East (compare the clips in the accompanying featurette with the corresponding scenes in the film itself). The results are often drab and unappealing. Similarly, Tai Seng were unable to afford a new anamorphic transfer, so the image is merely letterboxed at 2.35:1, with optional subtitles in the lower masking. Though released in Hong Kong with a dubbed Cantonese soundtrack (included here, in 5.1 surround), viewers are urged to select the original sync-sound Mandarin track (also in 5.1), an effective remix of the theatrical DTS version. There's also an English track in 1.0 mono which is fairly sensitive to this particular film's demands.

Two separate commentaries are provided by the chief architects of the film's artistic success (Yu and Pau, respectively), and it's here that one learns the film's final cut was assembled in TWO WEEKS (!!), an astonishing revelation which is a testament to the remarkable skills of editor David Wu Tai-wai. By contrast, an equivalent Hollywood movie would have taken several MONTHS to work its way through the editing process! The second disc is a major disappointment: Three featurettes are promised, but they all turn out to be the same documentary repeated in English, Cantonese and Mandarin! In itself, it provides a fascinating glimpse into the filmmaking process, but the packaging seems to indicate three distinctly separate items, which is misleading. Trailers, photo galleries and biographies round out a pretty meager package. Tai Seng are to be commended for treating the film with due respect, but this two-disc set fails to meet expectations. Perhaps a single-disc arrangement (minus two of the three featurettes) might have been a wiser move?

Despite its flaws, this ambitious 'collector's edition' ultimately represents the best version of "The Phantom Lover" on home video to date, and is therefore highly recommended to anyone who loves the thrill of Pure Cinema. After all, it's the presentation which falls short of the mark, not the film itself.

Both the original synch-sound Mandarin soundtrack and the Cantonese dub sound great (lead Leslie Cheung's real voice is heard on both). The visual transfer, howeer, is not quite as impressive as I was expecting, as the image sometimes seems a bit fuzzy and drab, lacking the clarity one associates with DVD. Still, it looks better than most U.S. homevideo releases of Hong Kong movies (I'm particularly thinking of Columbia's recent 'Once Upon A Time in China' disk), and some of the "drabness" may be due to deliberate choices on the parts of Yu and Pau, with them favoring a softer image that doesn't work as well on disk as on the big screen.

But what about the movie itself? Although engrossing, it didn't bowl me over like 'The Bride with White Hair' did. The story is partially inspired by Gaston Leroux's 'Phantom of the Opera' (it's a remake of 'Song at Midnight,' a classic 1930's Chinese that was in itself a semi-remake of the silent 'Phantom' with Lon Chaney). Leslie Cheung's character is clearly meant to be the most sympathetic (and least murderous) Phantom in any version of this story, but he also comes across as cold and narcissistic, needlessly cruel to the woman (the luminous Chien-lien Wu of "Eat Drink Man Woman') who was supposedly his One Great Love. Cheung is a great actor and an accomplished singer, but I find his vocals a bit treacly, and the music isn't nearly as stirring as the score for 'Bride with White Hair.'

Still, I much prefer this to the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical or to any of the various sound versions of Gaston Leroux's original novel. If nothing else, director Yu and cinematographer Pau are amazing visual stylists (it's almost insulting that, after doing this, the only U.S. gig they could get was 'Bride of Chucky').