"Infatuation" Chinese VCD Cover
Director: Jimmy Sin Chi-Wai
Writer: Choi Ting-Ting
Producer: Chow Yiu-Shan
Cast: Francoise Yip, Wong Chung-Kwan, Money Lo Man-Yee, Simon Lui Yu-Yeung, Donna Chu Git-Yee, Hugo Ng Doi-Yung
Running Time: 92 min.
By Brmanuk
Ken (Wong Chung Kwan) has a drunken one night stand with his secretary, Maggie (Francoise Yip Fong Wah), whilst separated from his wife May (Money Lo Man Yee). When Ken and May reconcile, Maggie, who wrongly believes Ken is in love with her, is pushed over the edge and begins making their lives hell.
Infatuation (1995) is pretty much a remake of Fatal Attraction and takes it’s basic storyline and characters from the 1987 film. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however, and I enjoyed Infatuation‘s take on the story. The film contains enough differences to stop it from being an outright clone including an interesting courtroom scene and some laughably outrageous plot twists.
Unfortunately Infatuation is not without it’s flaws. The film is pretty uneven in tone, starting as a plausible thriller and then turning rather ridiculous in the third act. The film tries hard to crank up the melodrama towards the end but it’s all a bit too ridiculous to take seriously. The uneven characterisations are the film’s biggest problem. At first Maggie is a standard psycho ex-lover but then the film tries to present her as a sympathetic character who is mentally unstable. The film, however, then does a 180 and puts Maggie into psychohosebeast-mode again. By the end of the film, she is a sympathetic character again and the audience is left confused as to why Ken and May show any sympathy towards her at all after all she has done to them.
Despite these flaws, I enjoyed Infatuation. It’s fairly well acted (although Ken’s daughter suffers from ‘Annoying Kid Syndrome’) and Françoise Yip looks fantastic throughout. The film becomes a bit ridiculous towards the end but overall Infatuation presents an interesting take on Fatal Attraction‘s storyline.
Brmanuk’s Rating: 7/10
