地下情

“I like to watch you guys wasting the life away.”

At the end of the film, the dying police detective said so to Tony. When I was watching the film, I feel the police detective played by Chow Yun-fat took the role of an audience -- like us -- of the story. He tried to build relationships with other characters but he was not involved in any relationship with them. Meanwhile, he did not influence the development of the story either. Like the audience, he just watched everything happen: the death, the abortion, the cheating, the breakup. At last, he indicated the keyword of this film, “waste”.

One particular example is the sex scene between Tony and Billie in the rice. Tony cut all the neatly arranged rice bags with a little knife. A large amount of white rice fell from the height and splashed around, and then Tony and Billie made love inside the small space with all the splashing rice. It is a waste of rice, definitely, but beyond that, it is also a waste of “love”. Tony’s father and mother used to make love in this way, and that is how they had Tony. That was not a waste as the “love” made a baby. However, Tony and Billie’s sex in the rice led to nothing. Billie thought she fell in love with Tony by that sex, but later she figured out that she was just afraid of being chocked by the rice to death.

Personally, I think the character of the police detective is also a waste. He asked random and unrelated questions, walked around everywhere, and hanged out with other characters. With so much time spent on this case, nothing was discovered and the case was not solved till the end.

I think the director, Stanley Kwan, tried to depict the lonely, depressed and even meaningless life of the young generation born and raised up in the modern city. To build a relationship with others is a waste, as people will cheat, breakup, leave or die somehow, and the relationship will finally go nowhere. To make love is a waste, as people do not love others but only love themselves. To have sex is a waste, as people do not want a baby. Even if they have a baby, they will go to abort, which may be called “a waste of baby” or “a waste of life”. They spend their time in bars, in flirting, in dreaming while they have no clear plan for the future. They become dazed in the rapid development of modern society.