My Heart is That Eternal Rose

The idyllic, beach-side life of a retired Triad boss, his daughter Lap (Joey Wong) and her boyfriend Rick (Kenny Bee), shatters when a mob favor turns into a bloody shootout. Trading her freedom for her father’s, Lap becomes mistress to Godfather Shen, while Rick goes into exile. Years later, as Shen unknowingly hires Rick as a hitman, Lap sees her chance at escape, while doe-eyed Triad gofer (Tony Leung) completes the doomed quadrangle.

Directed by the foremost stylist of the Hong Kong New Wave (and a mentor to Wong Kar-Wai), My Heart Is That Eternal Rose is the apotheosis of Patrick Tam’s time within the strictures of the Hong Kong mainstream. Fulfilling commercial requirements while elevating formula with a lush sense of style, it sings with the painterly cinematography of Christopher Doyle and David Chung as Tam’s dream-like direction bridges the distance between the bullet ballets of a John Woo and the festering darkness of a David Lynch. It is the blue jewel in the crown of the Hong Kong heroic bloodshed sub-genre, shining bright to this day.

A native of Guangdong, in 1967 he joined TVB as a cinematographer. In 1975, he became a director and a scriptwriter, and made the well-known artistic dramas such as ''CID'' and ''Seven Women''. One of the episodes titles ''The Star Map'' in his TV work ''Wonderfun'' even won the Silver Medal in International Film and TV Festival of New York. In the same year, Tan was sent by TVB to San Francisco, the United States, to further study the techniques of film-making and editing. In 1977, he left TVB to become a film director. His works ''The Sword'', ''Love Massacre'' and ''Nomad'' were characterized by an innovative usage of the film language, and assured Tan's position as one of the representatives of Hong Kong New Wave Directors. Tan has been concentrating on film editing most recently. He won the Best Editing Awards in the 28th and 31st Golden Horse Awards with ''Days of Being Wild'' and ''Ashes of Time'' respectively, both directed by Wong Kar-Wai.