I saw the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, under the title Ocean Flame, and I found the movie completely involving despite not being very uplifting. It's a film from Hong Kong about an innocent young woman who falls for a criminal.
Unless I missed it, I don't think the director was trying to say in any general way why some women are attracted to "bad boys". It seemed he was simply telling the story of two people who don't belong together, but get together regardless, and their affect on each other.
Fan Liao plays the bad guy and effects such a perfect bad boy smirk that most of the men in the audience will want to punch him in the face every moment he's on the screen. Monika Mok, playing the innocent who falls for the criminal, is astonishingly beautiful and is very convincing as a woman that men would be obsessed over. They enter into a dominance- submissive sexual relationship, but it always feels that underlying it they're in love with each other.
The movie is also interesting by giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the life of a criminal and his gang. I felt the movie took an unusual approach in that absent were any of the conventional attempts to explain away their criminality. None of them complains about their bad childhood or poverty or bad breaks. It's simply that they aren't nice people, they know they aren't nice people and they like not being nice people.
If the movie has any downside, it's that it may make you afraid of falling in love.
Unless I missed it, I don't think the director was trying to say in any general way why some women are attracted to "bad boys". It seemed he was simply telling the story of two people who don't belong together, but get together regardless, and their affect on each other.
Fan Liao plays the bad guy and effects such a perfect bad boy smirk that most of the men in the audience will want to punch him in the face every moment he's on the screen. Monika Mok, playing the innocent who falls for the criminal, is astonishingly beautiful and is very convincing as a woman that men would be obsessed over. They enter into a dominance- submissive sexual relationship, but it always feels that underlying it they're in love with each other.
The movie is also interesting by giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the life of a criminal and his gang. I felt the movie took an unusual approach in that absent were any of the conventional attempts to explain away their criminality. None of them complains about their bad childhood or poverty or bad breaks. It's simply that they aren't nice people, they know they aren't nice people and they like not being nice people.
If the movie has any downside, it's that it may make you afraid of falling in love.