A Moment of Romance (1990): Heroic Bloodshed and Young Love (Review)

A cult classic that ensured iconic status for its star Andy Lau, Benny Chan’s 1990 directorial debut A Moment of Romance is released to Blu-ray by Radiance next week and is a must for anyone who likes a bit of style to their violence.

Andy Lau stars as Wah Dee, a rebel without a cause affiliated with the local Triad. Tasked with driving the getaway car during an armed robbery, this streetwise bad boy takes innocent bystander Jo-Jo (Wu Chien-lien, credited here as Jacklyn Wu) hostage as a means of ensuring his escape. Fearing the girl will ID the whole gang, the ambitious and volatile young punk Trumpet (Tommy Wong) wants to rub her out, but Wah Dee shows his sensitive side and moral compass by shielding her and accepting all responsibility should Jo-Jo speak to the police. It’s an action that drives a wedge between the two gangland rivals, but Wah Dee is helpless in the face of his growing attraction to the law-abiding rich girl from the right side of the tracks, and the feeling proves mutual. As their love affair blooms, numerous forces – Trumpet, the police and Jo-Jo’s wealthy parents – gather around them to bring about an inevitably tragic and desperate end.

A stylish variation of Romeo and Juliet, played out in the seamy underbelly of Hong Kong, A Moment of Romance is a youth movie that reminds you how near unbearable young love felt thanks in no small part to the reckless yet misunderstood Lau and the purity of Chien-lien. The movie proved to be a massive success and highly influential, sparking two sequels (neither bearing any relation to the original story other than the title and the cast) and skyrocketing the leads to iconic levels of fame. Hollywood may have had the likes of Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, River Phoenix or Christian Slater but, for the clamouring audiences across Asia who ensured lucrative box office takings, there was Andy Lau. Sat astride his flashy Suzuki motorcycle, he was a bequiffed, impeccably cool bad boy whose heart of gold lay beating beneath his collar-popped stonewashed denim jacket or his stolen white groom’s tuxedo. A born pin-up and cinematic icon, from that moment on Lau and Wah Dee became inseperable, one and the same. A Moment of Romance saw the creation of a powerful screen persona that the star has continued to mine for thirty plus years, including his famous parodying of the role in Wai Ka-Fai’s romcom Needing You…(2000). Hollywood could keep their young pretenders, Hong Kong cinema had discovered the reincarnation of James Dean himself. When faced with the prospect of Lau and his sweet, innocent teen bride Wu Chien-lien, audiences sensed the fatalism, they understood from the title itself that this was a love affair as fleeting and doomed as that of the Bard’s creations, but it didn’t matter; they signed up to the thrill-ride and the tearful, heartbreaking ending all the same.

Chan’s film follows closely the Hong Kong action cinematic tropes of ‘Heroic bloodshed’, a genre of films that would focus specifically on criminals such as Triad gang members or hit men who nevertheless act in accordance with a strict code of ethics that invariably sees them betray their brothers and/or paymasters in favour of an intended victim. That this trope is evident in the sweetly tender central relationship between Wah Dee and Jo-Jo is a given, but there’s also the strong sense of loyalty that Wah Dee possesses elsewhere to consider too; such as his loving relationship and commitment to flighty, gossipy surrogates who raised him (portrayed by Sandra Lang, Bonnie Wong and Anna Ng) after his barmaid mother tragically died, as well as his strong bonds with both Brother Seven (Chu Tit-wo), his superior in the gang and the power-hungry Trumpet’s main rival, who vouches for Wah Dee’s maverick behaviour many times, and the simple-minded car washer Rambo (Ng Man-tat). This latter one is particularly relevent because, whilst initially Ng Man-tat’s performance can be seen as a somewhat irritating comic relief, a jesterly break from the gritty, bloody melodrama and the touching love affair, it ultimately becomes clear that Wah Dee feels just as protective towards Rambo as he does Jo-Jo. There’s a sense of those with no future doing all that they can to support and look out for one another which perhaps taps into the anxieties inherent in Hong Kong society at the time of the movie’s production. The clock was ticking down to 1997, a date which saw the British hand over to China and retreat from a territory they had occupied since 1841. The future invariably felt a very scary prospect, one in which the haves (such as Jo-Jo, whose exit to Canada is already pre-ordained by her affluent parents) where likely to move up and out, whilst the have nots like Wah Dee and his street gangs were left to rage between one another for scraps and against something that they could never hope to alter.

A Moment of Romance may feel dated, a touch of Miami Vice 80s pastel-hued and neon-lit glamour culture-clashing with the grit of the Hong Kong underworld, a milieau where the primary colour is blood red spraying from all-too-casual machete stabbings, but that nostalgia is now part of the fun. The romantic montages of Lau and Chien-lien, taking time out from the action to ride bicycles and fly over the harbour and the like, accompanied by soupy ballads from rock group Beyond, are undoubtedly cheesy to view today, but they still come across authentically primarily because of the effective chemistry between the two stars. And if that closing sequence doesn’t hit you right in the feels then there’s no poetry in your soul.

Once again, Radiance impress with this release which includes a 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative, a new video essay on the film by Asian cinema expert David Desser, an archive interview with the deceased director Chan, and an audio commentary from Frank Djeng. There’s also a limited edition booklet with new writing on the movie unavailable to this reviewer.

Mark’s Archive: A Moment of Romance