(2007, China, Xin zhong you gui)
This is being billed as one of the first horror movies to be made in China. Supernatural storylines in movies there, simply haven't been allowed until now. I've got a huge pictorial history book of movies from China, and the only ones in the fantasy genre are a dozen retellings of the story of MONKEY!
 
Even in Hong Kong, serious ghost stories are rare, comedy horror is plentiful - but THE MATRIMONY isn't played for laughs. While it doesn't provide any particularly new scares, it's still a beautifully made film.
 It has the kind of budget only lavished on films destined for international success. The huge period sets recreating Shanghai in the 1930's are handsomely mounted. These opening scenes, that set up a tragic love affair, are only marred by a very poorly realised computer-generated road accident. The CGI effects throughout the rest of the story are used more subtly and effectively. It's really one particular shot that I wish wasn't in the film.
The opening titles, indeed the first half hour of the film, lay on spooky atmosphere and loud shock moments so thickly, that it detracts from the flow (and logic) of the story. Junchu (Leon Lai), loses his sweetheart in a car accident and is forced into an arranged marriage with Sansan (Rene Liu), a woman he simply doesn't love. But will he change his mind if the ghost of his sweetheart, Manli (Fan Bingbing), possesses the body of his wife?
 Basically, it's a love triangle, with strong performances from the three leads. There's even a heavy nod to Hitchcock's REBECCA (1940), as a suitably spooky housekeeper prevents Sansan from entering a locked room in Junchu's huge mansion.
But it reminded me even more of Stanley Kwan's ROUGE (1987, Hong Kong), a similarly unrequited love story, which preferred to tone down the supernatural element and played successfully as a drama, where one of the characters just happens to be dead. Again, the ghost was very beautiful (Anita Mui), the setting was modern day, but with flashbacks to the 1930's. ROUGE worked well because it didn't treat the ghost as a scary monster.
THE MATRIMONY is torn between scaring an audience who've never seen a ghost story before, and telling the story. I enjoyed it for the lavish look, the colourful cinematography, and the cast, but not for the scares.
The no-frills Hong Kong DVD release (from Mei Ah Entertainment) has good English subtitles, an anamorphic widescreen picture, and an optional DTS audio track.
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