Love & Sex in Sung Dynasty (1999)

Love & Sex in Sung Dynasty (1999)
Chinese Title: 宋朝風月
Translation: Sung Dynasty Wind Moon

 

Starring: Chin Siu-Ho, Chiu Lai-Yee, Monica Chan Fat-Yung, Elvis Tsui Kam Kong, Shing Fui-On, Phillip Ko Fei, Xing Yu
Director: Phillip Ko Fei
Action Director: Ko Chun Kit, Jimmy Ko Chim Mei

 

The early 1990s wire-fu boom more or less burned out after the failure of Tsui Hark’s The Blade in 1995. There were some stragglers who apparently didn’t get the memo, like Yuen Woo-Ping’s Tai Chi II and Sammo Hung’s Once Upon a Time in China and America. But then in 1998, the CGI-heavy comic book fantasy The Storm Riders came out and set the stage for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to change the game forever. And right smack dab in between those two groundbreaking movies was this obscure, low-budget wuxia film that harkened back to the earlier part of the decade, albeit with less wires and (practical) FX than your average Ching Siu-Tung film boasted. It really is the last old school wuxia to come out of Hong Kong, as far as I can tell.

Set during the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960 – 1279), this film follows the trials and travails of the Ouyang family, who belong to the Kunlun Clan of martial artists. There are two retired scholars with ties to Kunlun: Ouyang Hung (Elvis Tsui Kam Kong, of Prison on Fire 2 and Girls Unbutton) and his brother, Ouyang Tin. Hung has a son named Spring (Chin Siu-Ho, of Tai Chi Master and Fist of Legend) and Tin has a daughter named Ping (Chiu Lai-Yee, of Millenium Dragon and Black Cat in Jail). Spring and Ping have grown up together and clearly love each other, but their parents have different plans for them…but their names rhyme! They MUST be made for each other!

So, one day Spring and Ping are out on the town when they learn that the local General Pong (Shing Fui-On, of The Killer and Cheetah on Fire) is holding a martial arts tournament to find a husband for his daughter, Kuen (Monica Chan, of Full Alert and God of Gamblers II). Ping, dressed like a man, decides to participate as a joke and ends up winning. Although Kuen eventually discovers the ruse, it does give Ping a few days to stay at the Pong estate. Ping at Pong’s. Oh dear. She discovers that General Pong and Master Sheung are planning on a coup d’état to establish a new dynasty.

Ping finds the letter that would incriminate them and takes it back to show her Uncle Hung. At this point, Spring is studying kung fu at Shaolin for…reasons…so Ouyang Hung sends Ping to Shaolin to fetch him. While she’s gone, Pong’s two sons and his top killers—Heaven and Earth (one of whom is director Phillip Ko Fei)—are sent to the Ouyang estate to murder everybody. Since only Hung is there, he gets it. When Spring finds out, he declares a mission of vengeance against the Pong family and kidnaps Kuen during his first assassination attempt. Kuen eventually falls in love, while Ping is sent from Shaolin to Emei Mountain to improve her kung fu in the company of the nuns there.

Apparently, there are two versions of this movie: one presented by Jacky Wong of the Winners Workshop Production Company and another presented by Jeremy Cheung of My Way Film Company. Although both films apparently have the same cast, there are some slight differences in the crew. The version I watched was the Winners Workshop one, whose official English title is indeed Love & Sex in Sung Dynasty. While there is a fair amount of love, there is no actual sex in this movie. I’m guessing that the sex was filmed for the other version, although there’s nothing in the story that would suggest the presence of T&A. So, I’m guessing the story is slightly different.

Although a Jess Franco-ish approach to filmmaking—multiple versions for multiple markets with differing censorship laws—would explain why a movie with “Sex” in the title might actually be bereft of the same, it does not justify the myriad of plot holes in this movie. Early on, Ouyang Hung (the dad) mentions that his son Spring has been arranged to marry the daughter of Ching, husband of Master Sheung and a former flame of old Hung. We never actually see said daughter, and the arranged marriage never again shows up in the dialog.

The film also has a bizarre sense of time, as if Shaolin, Kunlun, Ermei and the capital are all located within a day’s walk from each other. At one point, Ping arrives at Shaolin and is directed to Emei, after which she meets up with Ping and Kuen shortly afterward. But then she talks about staying at Shaolin with her dad until he got sick and died, but we the viewer never see anything like that onscreen (or anything that might even suggest it). And how could she go to Ermei and vastly improve her kung fu over the course of a day? So, did only a couple of days pass? Or did months pass between Spring’s kidnapping Kuen and Ping’s reunion with them—which by this point, Kuen has fallen for Spring. I’m guessing a low budget film like this was made in a hurry, so re-writes to the script were just not possible.

The action in this version was brought to you by fourth-string action directors Ko Chun Kit and Jimmy Ko Chim Mei. Ko Chun-Kit was a long-time collaborator with Phillip Ko Fei, both in front of and behind the camera. His work as action director was limited to a handful of late period Ko Fei films and some adult/Cat. III movies, too. For co-choreographer Jimmy Ko, this was his only gig as fight choreographer. The movie resembles an early 1990s Ching Siu-Tung film, like Butterfly and Sword and The Heroic Trio, with lots of spinning and twirling to complement the more basic swordplay. There are some wire-stunts here and there, but I’m guessing the crew had neither the time or budget (or talent) to do anything complex, which is actually for the best. The swordplay is more grounded than most wuxia films of that decade, which is actually refreshing. The only thing about the action I didn’t like was the occasional blurry shot of Chin Siu-Ho rushing at (or past) the camera in order to convey the idea of super speed. Those moments were cheesy. Also, the final fight between him and Phillip Ko Fei is a bit too short. Does this movie deserve to be forgotten? I don’t know. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great. But I appreciate good ol’ fashioned balletic spinning and twirling at a time CGI was seeping into the HK movie scene.