Fridae

"It was all right, I wasn't nervous at all. It was something we were both looking forward to. In fact the experience isn't enough. I want more."
- Vicki Zhao's reply to a local magazine on how it feels to share a kiss with Karen Mok in So Close.

I have always been an ardent admirer of actress Shu Qi.

Not just because she is a vamp in every sense of the word, but because of her admirable ability to utter her lines while looking like she is having an orgasm every time she graces the screen with her luminous presence. Having religiously followed her film career from Viva Erotica to Millennium Mambo to even the ribald Sex and Zen II, there was no way I was going to miss her latest cinematic offering.

Directed by Corey Yuen who was responsible for classic martial arts films such as Fong Sai Yuk and Once Upon At Time In China as well as the Hollywood stinker The One (all starring Jet Li), So Close also stars Vicki Zhao and Karen Mok.

In the movie, Shu Qi and Vicki Zhao play sisters whose murdered father invented a system called World Panorama that can tap into every single surveillance camera on earth. As hired assassins, the sisters use this high-tech gadget to help them track down their unsuspecting victims and devise logic-suspending escape routes when pursued by the inefficient Hong Kong police.

As Lynn, Shu Qi is a diabolical knockout with the enviable gift of having her personal breeze accompany her and lift her Pantene-glossy locks becomingly in slow-mo even inside the interior of a skyscraper. As Sue, Vicki Zhao plays second fiddle to Shu Qi in the first half of the movie as the younger computer wiz kid of a sister characterized by her usual doe-eyed look of mischievous innocence.

Together, they deliver killer kicks in 10-cm stiletto heels, shoot off unending rounds of bullets as if they were in a John Woo gangsterama and crash through glass panels with no rhyme or reason other than to watch the glass shatter oh-so-prettily around them without harming a single hair on both our heroines.

That is until Karen Mok arrives on the scene as Kong Yat Hong, a supersmart cop with a photographic memory as amazing as her ability to execute painful looking splits in midair within the confines of a lift. Karen, of course, has her hands full trying to bring the luscious twosome to justice, playing mother hen to her young inexperienced male police partner while simultaneously fighting the overbearing male chauvinism of the Hong Kong Police Force (the only believable part of the entire film if you ask me but I digress).

With pert butts and unending legs aplenty, there is a high chance that the gay community may give the movie a miss because of the overwhelming estrogen levels and usual melodrama of the female-bonding kind. That would be a waste because in addition to the combined star wattage of the three female leads, So Close is pure escapist entertainment of the highest level and guest stars Korean heartthrob of the moment, Song Seung Hun.

Song who is renowned for his roles in popular Korean drama serials such as Autumn In Your Heart is quite the looker even though his thick eyebrows make his face appear as if two bears crawled above his eyes and died there. In the movie, Song plays Yan, Shu Qi's love interest who does nothing more than look lovelorn as he did in his numerous Korean TV tearjerkers.

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Fortunately, unlike the wimpy Song (who had to depend on Shu Qi to rescue him in a role-reversing Prince-Charming-in-distress scene), there is a rather delectable baddie bodyguard played by a Hong Kong actor with an impressive built and a machismo not seen on the scene since the demise of John Wayne. Unfortunately, he was at the receiving end of a resounding kick to the balls (ouch!) and was last seen falling to his doom after a fight scene with the feisty Karen - the detective with the under-the-belt (literally) fighting techniques.
In addition to the attractive cast, the movie also features out-of-this-world gizmos such as cyanide spewing sunglasses, stiletto heels with hidden spikes (the latest runway rage in Paris according to Karen's character) and Batman-like belts that shoot steel wires.

Yet in spite of the impressive fight scenes, sumptuous eye candy and cool gadgets, what is most interesting about So Close is the recurrence of lesbian themes throughout the entire movie. In fact, the movie at times feels like a lesbian wet-dream come true with shots of Shu Qi rolling out of bed in a translucent shirt and applying wet lip gloss on lips made for sucking watermelons dry.

Then there's Vicki Zhao who is portrayed as a latent lesbian stalker who rollerblades around a record store while eyeing Karen, spies on Karen at work using her World Panorama system and of course, asks Karen in a sexually charged moment if she would find her (Vicki) attractive if she was a (male) police officer. And last but not least, there are the gratuitous lesbian scenes of the almost soft-porn variety out of which the following three are the most outstanding:

Gratuitous Lesbian Scene 1
In a peekaboo bathroom scene, Vicki Zhao enters in a tank top and shorts while Shu Qi soaks in a bathtub filled with foam bubbles. A mischievous fight ensues as Vicki tries to rip off Shu Qi's towel to prove that she is finally ready to go solo (surely there must be better ways�). Shots of the nubile twosome follow as they punch, kick and somersault around a see-through shower curtain. Indeed, the scene is a tantalizingly wet kung-fu fight saved from soft-porn hell by judicious editing and the strategic use of a large white towel.

Gratuitous Lesbian Scene 2
Handcuffed to each other, Karen Mok and Shu Qi engages in fisticuffs at an underground carpark. In this extended dueling scene which is the wish fulfillment of every straight and lesbian bondage fantasies combined, the leggy twosome proceeds to rough each other up and then rip the fabric off each other's blouse to reveal a heaving bosom or two. On-screen rough-play between ladies has never been sexier since Neve Campbell's and Denise Richard's fight-then-kiss-fest in 1998's Wild Things.

Gratuitous Lesbian Scene 3
During the spectacular confrontation with the evildoers at the end of the movie, Vicki and Karen double-team to fight their way to the evil head honcho while getting their clothes systematically sliced off by an ageing Japanese actor with serious samurai delusions. After carving up the evil doers, Vicki decides to plant a soft-focus kiss on the luscious lips of Karen Mok - thus sealing the movie's place as one of the rare mainstream Asian movies to feature a lesbian kiss (and not get censored in Singapore).

Overall, whichever way you may swing, the movie is still highly entertaining and stylish in a post-Matrix fashion parade sort of way. And that, my dear readers, is just one of the many reasons why you should not miss this movie.

And of course, there's always Shu Qi the sexpot...