My Heart is That Eternal Rose (Sat sau woo dip mung)

if you are longing for that fuzzy, neon lit niche between wong kar-wai melodrama and john woo’s heroic bloodshed, then patrick tam is your man!

Christina

Rarely have I ever felt the fear of the ordinary as I do here. Just an ordinary man. An ordinary face. An ordinary smile that bares such ordinary words. Somehow, without ever veering into the territory of the fantastical or supernatural, Patrick Tam is able to capture the…

reibureibu

What do you get when you add God-tier level cinematography, a synth heavy score, a straightforward plot (!) with a perfect mix of action, drama and romance, and actors giving it their bloody all? A frickin' Hong Kong classic, that's what! First The Sword and now this; I am…

Lou (doesn't rhyme with booh! 👻)

The divorce between Patrick Tam's formalist preoccupations and the needs of the Hong Kong film industry was always much more pronounced than that of his peers. He was a filmmaker ahead of time, like the much gentler Allen Fong, looking for a certain auteur career that was…

Filipe Furtado

I don’t know if there’s a better image for encapsulating this film than a baby-faced Bambi-eyed Tony Leung bleeding through his pastel yellow trousers. Somehow, that just perfectly conveys this is Hong Kong romantic melodrama fused with heroic bloodshed, all wrapped up in…

Lexzilla

It’s got the vapor, it’s got the waves, it’s got Tony Leung staring longingly into Christopher Doyle’s lenses and melancholic heroic bloodshed aplenty; what more could you possibly ask for in cinema?

Tao A

Wilting bodies falling to pieces like petals from a stemmed red, their inner pigment purged in a crimson mass of operatic bloodshed; a canticle of doomed love and lost dreams marked by the fatal acciaccatura played by the cold steel that pierces hopeful spirits everlasting.…

Jerry

Stylish and melodramatic story of two star crossed lovers, separated by circumstances outside of their control. Joey Wang and Kenny Bee are affecting as the two lovers, Lap and Rick, who once torn apart won't throw away their chance to be together again, despite the danger.…

caterwauls

Tam’s film is a true romance, a tragedy about people who are constantly finding themselves in traps where the only way out is to sacrifice their body for the person they love, which in turn would only lead to more violence and more heart-breaking dilemmas. Call it Romantic…

Sean Gilman