Immortal Story (1986)

[GlacierTuba]

First title from the recent 5729 Blu Ray titles for 8p deal on Amazon France that I received this week, and we're off to a good start as Immortal Story is a bit of a doozy.

It starts off as an extremely wholesome, teetering on cringe romantic tale, played out how only Asian cinema can. Think long, hot Summer afternoons, holding hands, going cycling together, watching sailboats go by and losing your hat in a random Summer Breeze, all while laughing cheerfully at each other over nothing. Think Kimagure Orange Road meets a Chambourcy yogurt commercial. I thought I was going to be sick.

...and then...and then Immortal Story suddenly turns in to this sea of pure, total and utter depression and just...just an abyss, this void of pure bloody bile. It's like a punch in the gut to teach you, the viewer for being a soppy, weeping, gormless ape. A big 'up yours' and no F's given.

The film doesn't actively state this as such, stay with me on this I'm trying not to spoil it. Rather you have this sudden epiphany mid-way through and the rest neatly falls in to place. It sounds cryptic, sorry, but just give the film a try and hopefully you'll come to the same realisation too.

This is another one of those films that heavily promotes a 'theme song' and it's used to death in Immortal Story. It almost verges on grating, but here I am writing this and the bloody song is firmly burrowed in to my psyche forever.

I wouldn't say Immortal Story is an outstanding film, notwithstanding the superb corkscrew of twists at the climax, but it is a bloody interesting film and one absolutely worthy of your time - and probably the odd rewatch too.

For a film that is so overloaded with saccharin it's teetering on glucotoxicity, it's so utterly depressing but in an oddly engaging way. The only thing worse would be opening the disc case and finding a gas bill inside it rather than an interesting booklet.

Highly recommended.


The Disc:

About the actual disc. You get a nice transparent slip case, the disc, the film, an image gallery on auto play and a trailer. That's it. So once you've finished watching Immortal Story and your previously good mood has been shoved well and truly back down your throat, you can go and explore a disc with F**K ALL ON IT. Because that is all you deserve and you will be happy about it!

[Caladriusse]

I know what you mean about the theme song. It is one of those songs that I like to file under "1980s lift music". It is like a synthesizer doing glockenspiel music. I think either Double Fixation (1987) or Last Romance (1988) has even more of it. Someone who actually knows something about music might be able to explain it better.

Story-wise I thought that her 'descent' into drugs was pretty weak. Didn't seem to have much development of it at all, she simply got involved in them! I got the impression that the filmmakers had no real experience or knowledge of that topic whatsoever. She seems to inject heroin, but in the end there are big bags of cocaine... (also, the blurb says that HE becomes a drug addict, but from my watching it seemed that he was just a drug seller, and she (Sylvia Chang) became the addict; has that been erroneously copied from IMDB from someone who has not actually watched the film...)

Nevertheless, the film always looks beautiful! Really, really beautiful! Macao glistens. It is, as you put it, like one "long, hot summer afternoon", but with cocaine.

Edit: Also the slipcase is great

[GlacierTuba]

Good points, but you might want to wrap some of that in spoiler tags!