Green Snake

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Year of release: 1993

Genre: fantasy

Director: Tsui Hark

Action directors: Yuen Bun, Tong Gai

Producer: Fu Qi

Writers: Lillian Lee, Tsui Hark

Cinematography: Ko Chiu-Lam

Editor: A Chik

Music: Mark Lui, James Wong

Stars: Joey Wong, Magie Cheung, Zhao Wen-Zhuo, Wu Hsing-Guo, Ma Jing-Wu, Tien Feng, Chan Dung-Mooi, Lau Kong

Rated II for violence, nudity, and sexual situations

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Even in the sometimes schizophrenic world of Hong Kong movies, Tsui Hark's Green Snake stands out. Is it a fantasy film? A romance? A softcore arty smut picture? A deep metaphor on the frailities of humanity and the fallacy of religion? Or is it a bad acid flashback put to celluoid? Like the elusive question of many licks it takes to get to the middle of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

Green Snake is an adaptation of Lillian Lee's novel of the same name, which is a retelling of the traditional folk tale "Madame White Snake". Since I'm not familiar with the source material, the plot description here is going to be a bit rough, especially given that the Tai Seng DVD has horrible subtitles.

Anyway, there are two snake spirits (or "non-humans", as the subtitles put it) who are trying to become human. The older of the pair, Ching (Joey Wong), is close to attaining her goal by her marriage to a human, Hsui Xien (Wu Hsing-Kuo). The romance makes Ching's sister, Green (Maggie Cheung), jealous, but the siblings must put their rivalry aside as they battle an overzealous monk, Fa-Hai (Zhao Wen-Zhuo), who is determined to rid the world of evil spirits at any costs.

This movie is really full of ups and downs. The cinematography and editing is top-notch, giving the film a great look -- at least until the special effects start popping up. Around this time, the use of CGI was coming into vogue in Hong Kong productions, but even on the bigger-budget HK releases, the quality was nowhere close to western pictures. Seeing as Green Snake was seemingly made on a shoestring budget (at least for a Tsui Hark film) the computer effects presented look positively amateurish and laughable at points.

The emphasis on special effects becomes that more perplexing when you factor in the lovely actresses involved, who are this movie's best "natural" special effect. Really, in a film of this type, you couldn't ask for two better female leads than Joey Wong and Maggie Cheung. They're sexy as hell, giving the production yet more eye candy, and take their roles surprisingly seriously. However, since the script is (to be polite) disjointed and the English translation is more than a little confusing, it feels like their performances disappointingly end up not coming off as strong as they should.

As a director, Tsui Hark has brought forth some very uneven product over the years, but you can really never accuse his movies of being boring. Despite its' problems, Green Snake is still worth checking out if you want to take a walk on the stranger side of Hong Kong cinema. It's definitely one of the more unique Hong Kong pictures produced in Hong Kong during this period.

RATING: 6