Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

The Phantom Lover (1995)

Director: Ronny Yu

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

This grandiose vehicle for Leslie Cheung was intended to launch his comeback from a few years of 'retirement' as a singer, but neither the movie nor the soundtrack CD impressed the justifiably cynical HK public. Shot in China and based on a much more interesting 1937 melodrama made in Shanghai, it's a thinly plotted riff on the Phantom of the Opera story: Cheung plays the acid-scarred tenor who's reduced to warbling to his true love from behind a curtain while a surrogate beau mimes his words on stage. Awesomely insincere, the film piles on the romantic imagery and hopes the anachronistic score will glutinise the viewer's natural resistance.

Author: TR 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Ronny Yu

Producer: Michael Ng

Cast: Leslie Cheung, Wu Qian Lian, Huang Lei, Liu Lin full cast

Duration: 102 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.