Rouge

I just saw Stanley Kwan's "Rouge", starring Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung, again tonight.  Such a heartbreaking tale of tragic love and fate.  The story of the whore, Fleur, and her lover, Master 12 is such a tender and tragic story.  Every scene with Fleur and Master 12 in the world of pre-WWII Hong Kong is filled with light, color and vivid sound.  All of the scenes set in modern times are grey, one-dimensional, dim and hollow.  What passes for modern love is so pale in comparison (quite literally) with the depth of passion felt by the other pair of lovers.  The irony, of course, is that Fleur saved her lover from dying with her by drugging him before he took raw opium with her, and then resented the fact that he did not die with her.  When we uncover what his life has been after Fleur's death, we see that all of the life and color disappeared from it upon her death.  Without the love of his life, his existence is not worth much.  The final blow is when Fleur appears to him as a ghost. Without her, Master 12 has become something that holds no appeal for Fleur, and so she cruelly abandons him to live on without her once more.  If their love was so beautiful, so perfect, why could it not survive her death and his living on without her?