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Even before the writhing Indian ball sequence, the camera declares its Bollywood affinities with febrile dollying and mutant filters. The "natural order" is a marketplace of misshapen scramblers as overseen by the Buddhist zealot (Vincent Zhao), whose crusade targets rebellious animal spirits. A bamboo forest quaking with fuchsia smoke segues into a cobalt downpour, under which two snake sisters take up human form: White (Joey Wong) is attracted to the murmurs of scholars, Green (Maggie Cheung) tries out her new gams by grinding against a troupe of odalisques. One yearns for human feelings while the other is happy with animal appetites, like mermaids they're prone to sprouting scaly tails when wet; the perplexed academic (Wu Hsing-kuo) ping-pongs between the two and, when confronted with them in full serpentine-puppet mode, does a monumental spit-take. Meanwhile, the spoilsport monk wrestles with the monkey-tailed temptresses who dare interrupt his meditation—his puritanical control yields to the sight of Green in the river until his dragon tattoo flies to the rescue. "What lustful poetry! Who is it for?" Polar opposites (human and animal, male and female, repression and abandon) slam together in mythical slapstick freak-outs, endowed by Tsui Hark with florid illusionism (smoke plus wind equals flight, à la Pasolini's Arabian Nights) and soaring sensation. There's Cheung's breathtaking comic vamping, a temple turned scarlet by hypocritical proselytizing and at least one gag out of Ugetsu, all components of the tale's eccentric glow. In Tsui's cosmos, the path to enlightenment lies in recognizing the full range of emotion without forgetting how to catch flies with your tongue (cf. Russell's The Lair of the White Worm). With Lau Kong, Tien Feng, and Shun Lau.
--- Fernando F. Croce |