Lady in Black portrays Sang [Tony Leung Ka-Fai] as a worker in a building firm and May [Lin Ching Hsia] as his devoted wife, as well as "working mom". The first one is affected by social climbing obsessions and, in order to gain wealth and power, tries to ingratiate himself with his boss and also gambles big sums of money. However, things start going amiss when he loses $440.000 in the games. May, unaware of the reasons, generously helps the husband in trouble by forging her boss' signature on a check but becomes desperate, when she learns that her husband won't be able to return the $500.000 in time for her to fill the hole left in the firm's balance. How will the family, which also encompasses their son and May's father, be able to come out of this mess?
The movie is a tragedy, with few endearing moments and many harsh and cruel ones. There's a deliberate intention of dramatizing every scene, i.e. by making heavy rain fall down restlessly or by making the two co-stars (son and grandpa) "shakespearian" (meaning that they react pessimistically and impulsively to each situation), yet the aspects the movie deals with - loneliness, social climbing, the charm of power, moral integrity, faithfulness, elders' rest home, bankruptcy - are real and not exaggerated. Overall it's a movie worth seeing, more over as it's enlightened by a great and realistic interpretation by the two leads. 7/10
The DVD from Deltamac displays good picture quality, but suffers in the subtitles from a poor English translation
The movie is a tragedy, with few endearing moments and many harsh and cruel ones. There's a deliberate intention of dramatizing every scene, i.e. by making heavy rain fall down restlessly or by making the two co-stars (son and grandpa) "shakespearian" (meaning that they react pessimistically and impulsively to each situation), yet the aspects the movie deals with - loneliness, social climbing, the charm of power, moral integrity, faithfulness, elders' rest home, bankruptcy - are real and not exaggerated. Overall it's a movie worth seeing, more over as it's enlightened by a great and realistic interpretation by the two leads. 7/10
The DVD from Deltamac displays good picture quality, but suffers in the subtitles from a poor English translation