The Peeping

cover

Year of release: 2002

Genre: erotica/thriller

Director: Marco Mak

Producer: Lawrence Wong

Writer: Not a Woman

Editor: Marco Mak

Cinematography: Jimmy Kwok

Music: Lincoln Lo

Stars: Daniel Wu, Teresa Mak, Grace Lam, Jenny Yum, Patrick Keung, Samuel Leung

Rated III for language, violence, drug use, nudity, and sexual situations

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Director/cinematographer/editor Marco Mak was once a protege of the prolific trash film-maker Wong Jing, but apparently took away little of Wong's chutzpah from their times working together. Mak's directorial efforts, for the most part, are decent enough movies that are technically well-made but come off as more than a bit generic, and the erotic thriller The Peeping is another example of this. Despite the titillating cover art, it's basically a glorified version of semi-arty smut like Red Shoe Diaries.

In a plot ripped straight from an episode of Silk Stalkings, Daniel Wu plays Calvin, a private eye that specializes in divorce cases by taking hidden camera footage of people doing the horizontal bop. Calvin is hired by Wong (Grace Lam) to spy on Taiwanese politician Kwai Fung-Ming (Teresa Mak), whose active and vigorous sex life soon ignites Calvin's dormant libido, which wouldn't be a problem, except that he already has a girlfriend, Cindy (Jenny Yum).

Well, I guess when your movie is written by "Not a Woman" (rumored to be an Alan Smithee-type pseudonym for Hong Kong screenwriters) you shouldn't expect Shakespeare. There are some clumsy attempts to inject social commentary about the state of Taiwanese politics, but when these scenes are bookended by T&A, it's hard to take them seriously in any way.

Speaking of the T&A, the scenes of naughty bits are sexy without being overly smutty, but the filming and editing techniques employed sometimes makes them tough to watch, because you can't tell what's going on. The style was perhaps employed to try and get a Category IIB rating for the film's theatrical release, which was later retracted in favor of a Category III label for the DVD version, even though nothing seems to have been added.

Some mention must also be made of how dark The Peeping is. Not dark as in tone, but dark as in you'll be fiddling with the brightness setting on your TV during the whole running time. Perhaps it was due to a bad remastering on the Tai Seng DVD, but I think it's more of a case of Marco Mak going overboard in trying to establish a noirish feeling. Like a lot of the rest of the movie, Mak's efforts, while appreciated, end up misfiring, and regulate The Peeping to the bargain bin.

RATING: 4