Red Rose White Rose

Joan Chen and Winston Chao

Stanley Kwan's Red Rose White Rose is a rapturous romantic melodrama from 1994. The film is relatively faithful to its source, Eileen Chang's novella of the same name, which was first published in 1944. Zhen-Bao (Winston Chao) has returned to Shanghai after finishing his education in the UK. Hired by a trading company, Zhen-Bao takes a flat with an old classmate who has an attractive and very Western wife named Jiao-Rui (Joan Chen). The old friend leaves for a business trip and the inevitable occurs. 

The first half of the film is, largely, one long tryst. Kwan separates his lovers from the world as they plunge into each other. The camera remains tightly fixed on the duo. The current events of the era are faintly touched upon. Shanghai is evoked by artifice such as miniatures and hand painted backgrounds which play up the unreal, fairy tale nature of falling into romantic tumult. Christopher Doyle's cinematography utilizes inky black and blood orange to depict the flames of love. Jiao-Rui's apartment walls are studded with tiles, like the background of a Klimt, which shimmer just the right way thanks to Mr. Doyle. The use of titles, quoting the novella, further distances the audience from this folie à deux. When Jiao-Rui tells Zhen-Bao that she wants to ditch her husband and marry him, he recoils and retreats from her. He cannot sacrifice his career by marrying a divorcee, so he discards the red rose of passion for the white rose of marriage.

Veronica Yip

There is an ellipsis of time in the film and we see Zhen-Bao on his wedding day, embarking on an arranged marriage. His new wife, Yen Li (Veronica Yip), is the opposite of Jiao-Rui, in almost every way. She is unsophisticated and unresponsive in bed. She bears her husband a baby girl, her meddling mother-in-law prattles that the next one will be a boy, but their union is discordant. Zhen-Bao drowns himself in alcohol and frequents prostitutes. While the focus of the first half of the film is on the two lovers, the second half focuses on Zhen-Bao's family milieu with a foregrounding of his brother and mother. The palette of the cinematography changes also. Darkness is banished and the images are over saturated with light. Pastels are substituted for vivid primary colors, all the better to highlight the Western kitsch of the married couples' flat. The decor is festooned with cherubs and pink roses highlighting the cognitive dissonance of the menage.

Joan Chen's performance here is so ferocious that it convinced me that Hollywood misused her as an actress. Ms. Yip has less to do, mostly play sullen, but is equally expressive. Inexpressive is what Mr. Chao is, he reminded me of Gregory Peck, but this serves to bolster a film about the transience of male desire. The film ends with Zhen-Bao vowing to keep to the straight and narrow, but I note a trace of mild irony with the pat ending of this under seen masterpiece.