Viva Erotica

Viva Erotica is the English title of a marvelous Derrek Yee film starring Leslie Cheung, Karen Mok and Shu Qi.  This is a film about film making in Hong Kong in the 1990s, complete with a Triad crime boss turned film producer, a failed auteur director, and a porn actress who wants to keep her clothes on.  The main plot of the film is the trials and tribulations of Sing (Leslie Cheung) and his attempts to get back on his feet as a director after a series of failed pictures at the helm of a Triad-financed Category III picture.  This is Sing's first Category III picture and he spends a good portion of the film trying to figure out what makes for a good erotic film.

Despite its treatment of serious themes, the film has a light touch where the erotic content is concerned, beginning with the opening lovemaking scene between Sing and his girlfriend.  The scene is treated tongue-in-cheek, mixing reality with director Sing's imagination of the act as a scene in a film.  A campy rock number is the soundtrack to this ever more farcical love scene.  What begins as a few drops of water falling on Sing's back turns into a tidal wave that washes over the lovers by the time they climax.  By the end, when a film crew intrudes on the scene and the director yells "cut" at the climactic moment (all puns intended here), we see what an active and vivid imagination Sing has been blessed/cursed with.  In the end, most of the love-making depicted on screen seems to be what was playing in Sing's imagination.  Yee treats the act of lovemaking as a joyous experience, filled with humor and zest.  The joyousness and humor balance the straightforward depiction of lovemaking audiences see on screen.  I mean, any scene that starts with Leslie Cheung's naked tush and ends with him burning up the sheets can't help but be erotic.  Cheung was one of Hong Kong's most sensual actors and he gave a great performance in this scene.

The key moment in the film occurs when Sing has fought with his girlfriend and gone out into the hallway to be alone.  He hears his female upstairs' neighbor in the throes of sexual ecstasy and stops to listen.  The camera follows him as he climbs the stairs and then takes part in a dream-like sequence where he sees the leading lady in his film, Shu Qi, presented as a veiled every woman, the font of sexual desire and pleasure.  But key to this scene is that Sing never actually sees his moaning upstairs neighbor and, even in the dream sequence with Shu Qi, her body is veiled and, while he can touch it, he cannot see it clearly.  The message is that imagination is the key to true eroticism.  It is not so much what you show plainly, but what you suggest in conjunction with what you reveal.  Often what you imagine is much more powerfully erotic than the mere depiction of the sex act itself.  Once the libido is aroused, it is the mind more than the genitals that are the seat of eroticism.

The message of this film is one I heartily concur with.  If you are not familiar with this film, I urge you to rent it.  If you know the film, but haven't seen it in a while, watch it again.  This is a great movie and one with a message that resonates as clearly today as it did in 1996 when the film was first released.