[China Erotica] Viva Erotica (1996)

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Derek Yee's Category 3 opus about Category 3 filmmaking is an interesting, entertaining flick that seems to be saying a lot of complicated things when in fact it may not be. Leslie Cheung is Sing, a down-on-his-luck filmmaker who's pressured into directing a Category 3 flick by his sycophant producer Chung (Law Kar-Ying) and the local triad film boss (Paul Chun).
What Sing inherits is a mess as he tries to placate his doting girlfriend (Karen Mok) and then his bosses and his actors (Shu Qi and Tsui Kam-Kong). Most important, Sing must satisfy himself, but can he be artistically satisfied making a porn film? Things don't go well until he refocuses his drive (thanks to all sorts of handy plot devices and self-realizations) and then things start to click.
The message: even Category 3 filmmaking can be honorable and spiritual, and hey, porn filmmakers are people, too. Lau Ching-Wan appears as “Derek Yee,†jaded director and official fourth-wall joke. Does the film transcend it's rating to become art? Well, it succeeds as a satire but hedges near the end. The film seems to have tongue placed firmly in cheek (especially with the presence of many over-the-top dream sequences by Sing), but the finale suggests some sort of artistic triumph. Shooting sex like an 80's music video doesn't seem like art to me. It just seems...cheesy. (Kozo 1996)