The city of Chonqing, with that disturbing aspect that distinguishes it and which lends itself well to representing the tensions and contradictions of modern-day China, is the setting for the unravelling of a story of a morbid passion which could be superficially dubbed the Chinese Fatal Attraction.
However, the seemingly conventional story of a love triangle and a lover who schemes to get revenge is gradually transformed into a more complicated plot, which mirrors the deep social tensions of a city of which the film reveals both the traditional side of the poverty-stricken areas as well as that of the new bourgeoisie.
The story is told from the point of view of MoMo, a young Peeping Tom who works in a photography shop next to a luxury apartment block and who gets his kicks from taking pictures of the reality which surrounds him on his mobile phone. MoMo gets to know Sharon, the attractive owner of a beauty salon on the ground floor of the apartment block. Sharon is also John's lover. John lives on the upper floors and is married to Rose, the daughter of a rich businessman. MoMo also befriends Liu Fendou, one of the building supers: behind the facade of a rather dim-witted man he hides the burning desire to escape poverty and subservience.
The underlying theme of the story is apparent from the very first shots, in which we see the beautiful Sharon approach her lover and his wife under a pretext: the deceit and price they have to pay, the gradual loss of dignity and the ability to control sentiments, emotions, reality and, finally, destiny. But the individual characters slide into the dark side of their own personalities in different ways, contaminating each other with their sufferance, on a path that is destined to cause each one of them to precipitate into the abyss of madness. After her first passionate encounter with John, Sharon announces to him that "This is just the beginning. I want more," almost aware of the inevitable drama that will follow; while Liu Fendou, commenting, at the start of the story, on the different social status of himself and the people he is paid to look after, says, "Our world is ours, theirs is theirs," only to then go on and try to reverse his social standing by playing power games with Rose, which are further complicated by the mutual sexual attraction. Rose is perhaps the least predictable of the characters, going much further than her facade of perfect wife and mother would allow us to imagine. While John is a loser right from the very start, trapped between an increasingly demanding lover and a wife that he literally depends on.
The story constantly jumps back and forth, in a series of flashbacks which seek out the roots of the drama in the errors of the past. It unfolds in an unconventional manner, with lucid, precise colours, with an elegant, self-assured style right from the opening credits of the film, which bring to mind those of American Beauty. It reaches almost grotesque proportions in the excessive luxury of the home of the couple and in the madness which overcomes Rose, who plummets into the lobby completely covered in red paint, but concludes with an image of the Chongqing sky, the greyness, sadness and lucidity of which brings us crashing back to reality. The film competed to be the Chinese candidate for the 2006 Oscars along with The Banquet and Curse Of The Golden Flower.