European Premiere | Restored Classics | Out Of Competition
Hong Kong, 1981/4K 2025, 93’, Cantonese
Directed by: Patrick Tam
Screenplay: Joyce Chan
Cinematography (color): Brian Lai
Editing: Chow Shui-yuen
Art Direction: William Chang
Music: Joyce Chan, Patrick Tam
Producer: Patrick Lung Kong
Cast: Brigitte Lin (Ivy), Chang Kuo-chu (Chu Chung), Charlie Chin (Louie), Joy (Tina Liu), Deanie Ip (Chu Chung’s wife), Patrick Lung Kong, Ann Hui
Date of First Release in Territory: March 26th, 1981
Appearing at first to be a moody, atmospheric romance, Patrick Tam’s
Love Massacre morphs into an entirely different genre and impressively earns its title. The massacre part, especially.
Opening with a gorgeous shot of Brigitte Lin striding through an untouched desert, the film jumps back in time to introduce us to a college-aged couple, Joy (Tina Liu) and Louie (Charlie Chin), as a prosaic argument between the two leads to a bloody suicide attempt by Joy. Louie and Ivy (Brigitte Lin), Joy’s classmate at their San Francisco university, watch over Joy as she recovers, but her behavior disturbs them. Ivy is attracted to Joy’s older brother Chu Chung (Chang Kuo-chu), who she met the previous summer, and asks him to leave Hong Kong to visit his sister.
When Chu Chung arrives in San Francisco, the mutual attraction between him and Ivy sparks into something more, and the two start taking overnight road trips into the California expanse while Louie reluctantly watches over Joy. However, Louie clashes with Chu Chung over Joy’s condition; Louie seeks further treatment for Joy’s “hereditary psychiatric disorder” while Chu Chung seems oddly at ease with his sister’s problems. Ivy watches from the sidelines while doing what she does best: occupy the frame as only Brigitte Lin can, exuding unmatched charisma that would dwarf most celestial bodies.
Prior to
Love Massacre, Brigitte Lin was a Taiwan film superstar known for her romance films, many opposite Charlie Chin (who appears here in a platonic role). Lin would grow into an international superstar in Hong Kong films of all genres, from romance to martial arts to arthouse fare.
Love Massacre was part of her typecasting breakout, using her established status as a romance icon and subverting it for something far darker.
As the situation between the two couples worsens, so does the mental health of Chu Chung, who seems to possess Joy’s disorder but eschews self-harm for just harm.
During the film’s extended climax, Chu Chung seeks out Ivy, but she’s never where he’s looking, so anyone in his way becomes an obstacle and then a victim. Patrick Tam stages Chu Chung’s escalating violence with a meticulous intricacy that’s as impressive as it is horrifying. The film’s transformation from romantic drama to slasher horror is not without foreshadowing; Tam and his crew give the film an ominous dreamlike quality, employing surreal mise-en-scene and Dario Argento-esque use of color. The film’s San Francisco setting is oddly devoid of people, with locations appearing empty or sterile. Everywhere you look in
Love Massacre, something just seems off.
The unrealism may be the point. Despite its violence,
Love Massacre is not chaotic or cacophonous – it’s unrelentingly stylish and controlled, with even its most disturbing scenes possessing composition and color that’s beautiful and surreal. The otherworldliness makes convincing characterization unnecessary; without grounding in a recognizable reality, the characters cease to be real people and instead become stand-ins for human emotion that can be observed purely and even sympathetically. After all, who hasn’t felt regret, rejection, uncertainty, or rage? Ivy, Chu Chung, Louie, etc., are not victims or villains; they’re simultaneously both. Either lover or killer,
Love Massacre does not justify nor judge, and through color, style and motion – through cinema – they become vessels for human emotions that agitate long after the final frame.
Patrick Tam
Patrick Tam (b. 1948) is a Hong Kong director, screenwriter and editor. His 1980s films are a guided tour of Hong Kong filmmaking excellence, from swordplay classic The Sword (1980) and disaffected youth thriller Nomad (1982) to Wong Kar Wai -scripted crime drama Final Victory (1987) and hitman action-romance My Heart Is That Eternal Rose (1989). Tam is also an accomplished editor, having worked on Wong Kar Wai ’s Days of Being Wild (1990) and Ashes of Time (1994), as well as Johnnie To’s Election (2005).
FILMOGRAPHY
1980 – The Sword
1982 – Nomad
1984 – Cherie
1987 – Final Victory
1987 – Burning Snow
1989 – My Heart Is That Eternal
Rose
2006 – After This Our Exile
2020 – Septet – The Story of Hong Kong (episode)