Lost Souls (1980)

directed by Tun Fei Mou
Hong Kong
90 minutes
? stars out of 5 (I don't feel good about rating this)
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Lost Souls is a movie about a group of immigrants fleeing oppression in China only to face incredibly brutal conditions and sadistic men in Hong Kong. It is a category III movie and it's also directed by the same person who did Men Behind the Sun, so those two facts alone should give away that it doesn't shy away at all from showing the full extent of human cruelty.

Tonally it might be a little difficult for somebody not familiar with other films of its era (like me, admittedly) to get used to, because it is a Hong Kong action flick from the 80s and action movies produced in that part of the world at that time period are notoriously exaggerated and cheesy. Since there's no kickboxing or thievery or other edge-of-your-seat thrills in this, it's markedly less goofy than anything else would have been, but it still remains that it's in the style of goofier movies and it's still chock-full of punches that sound more like someone dropping a steak on concrete.

You have to consider, though, that not everybody has lived with the narrative of what a tragic film should look like that the Western world is most used to; soft string music and sad-eyed women and a very slow pace, things like that that come to mind when you think of depressing movies. For somebody who knew Hong Kong film all their life and worked exclusively with local talent and producers, this movie bears all the same depth that an American movie known for being sad would have. It's just delivered in a different format.

That being said, however, this movie has a weird fixation with nude women that doesn't become any easier to take in any context. I appreciated that it didn't shy away from depicting how the women in these camps would be treated particularly horrendously, because obviously that would have been a huge blind spot if they'd just shown the men getting abused, but it's just... it shows so much. The camera kept focusing on naked bodies and fleshy bits and maybe I'm missing some intonation that I was supposed to get but to me, sometimes the nudity just felt like it was there to titillate. And considering that the nude women in question were getting beaten and tortured, that puts me off, to say the least.

One thing's for sure: You definitely have to have some endurance to make it through this whole thing. I'm surprised it's not talked about like Men Behind the Sun is talked about because it's nasty. Nevertheless it tells a story that probably a lot of people weren't too happy to see told, covering the issue of immigration where other filmmakers might tend to sweep it under the rug.