DESIRE GAME (2019) review

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Ambitiously, Guo Tao has made science-fiction the genre of his directing debut, Desire Game. In it, he plays Guo Shi, the brilliant creator of the Butterfly, a still-in-development, revolutionary virtual reality system. But when his daughter falls to her death while entranced in the immersive effect of the Butterfly, he withdraws from public life and scientific research, becoming estranged from his wife (Mei Ting) and leaving his partner (Fan Wei) in charge of their company. One day, a young woman (Gai Yuexi) whose car broke down takes shelter at his villa; she then seduces him, only to be found dead in his car a few hours later. Guo Shi understands he’s being framed for murder, and can only rely on the help of his former disciple (Jiang Chao) and a homeless girl (Zhang Zifeng).

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LAST LETTER (2018) review

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23 years after Love Letter, Shunji Iwai makes his Chinese-language debut, produced by Peter Chan, with Last Letter, a variation on the same themes of ill-fated romance, missed opportunities and epistolary bonding and healing – and he’s actually already at work on a Japanese remake. Zhihua (Zhou Xun) just lost her sister Zhinan, and is taking care of her niece Mumu (Deng Enxi) and nephew Chenchen. When she attends a high school reunion instead of her sister, to announce her death to her former classmates, she doesn’t find the right moment to do so, and is at a loss when Yin Chuan (Qin Hao) reconnects with her: she used to be in love with him, but he was in love with Zhinan, and now he is mistaking her for her sister. Yet rather than clarifying the situation, she starts sending him letters, thus reviving countless memories of the past, while her own daughter Saran (Zhang Zifeng) and Mumu get in on the correspondence, by a twist of fate. Soon there are revelations, some arriving too late.

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