A Moment of Romance

In one short year Radiance Films has managed to become quite a tastemaker.  Entering into a crowded field of cult, exploitation, foreign and art house cinema, their Euro-centric output has reflected a uniquely intellectual approach to curation, turning almost every release into a reliable blind buy.  A Moment of Romance might be their most “accessible” title yet, building off the already large fanbase of Hong Kong action aficionados looking for a little sweetness and light amidst the traditional gang warfare.

Wah Dee (played with smoldering intensity by Andy Lau) is a low-level hood whose ethics get in the way when he’s ordered to kill a teenage hostage, JoJo (Chien-Lien Wu), after a jewelry heist.  Instead, the pair develop a relationship despite their diametrically opposed lifestyles.  JoJo’s falls hard for Wah Dee’s bad boy persona, even refusing to identify him to the police.  But Wah Dee’s struggles against the mutual attraction, realizing that their against-the-odds romance can only end in tragedy.

 

Hong Kong movies wear their hearts on their sleeves; which means multiple romantic montages set to power ballads while our lead characters fall in love in the background.  But it’s a credit to Lau and Wu’s chemistry that this modern-day Romeo and Juliet riff rarely comes across as manufactured.  Director Benny Chan’s film is the personification of an early ‘90s crowd-pleaser, covering a lot of the same ground Tarantino’s True Romancewould get around to a few years later.  But the post-modern edges are softened here, resulting in a film that, for all its flashes of action and brutality, could play in the background of a Taylor Swift video.  That’s not meant as an insult.  A Moment of Romance simply requires its audience to swallow its cynicism for an hour and a half.  Something we should all do more often anyway.

 

Radiance’s Blu-ray features a 4K restoration of the original negative and the original uncompressed mono PCM audio, so it looks as good as it sounds.  Plus a new visual essay, archival interview with Benny Chan, audio commentary, collector’s booklet and beautiful reversible sleeve artwork.

 

 

 

 

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