Last night James Marsh and I were fortunate enough to sit in on the first invitation only screening of Christopher Sun's 3D Sex And Zen: Extreme Ecstasy. And while there is still some fine tuning and massaging to do before the film releases to the public - and we won't be reviewing it before seeing the finalized version - I wanted to put down a few initial reactions.
First, the film is very well made and played fabulously well to the local crowd who were hooting and laughing from start to finish. And, yes, the laughter was one hundred percent intentional. While the trailers so far have focused on the sex and the action exclusively, Sex And Zen is a very funny movie - one loaded with great sight gags and memorable characters.
Technical aspects are very strong, with the film very well shot with excellent production values and exceptionally good CGI by Hong Kong standards. You can tell where the CG assists are every time but they are not distracting at all and generally used to execute the more eye popping 3D effects that just can't be done in camera.
On the eye popping front, yes, the film earns its title. At least the first part. It's a very sexy film, with a ton of skin, the pacing basically following the old Cinemax late night formula of story scene-sex scene-story scene etc. Probably slightly over half of all spoken dialogue is an 'oooh' or an 'aaah' of some sort. That said, it's not even remotely a hardcore film, the HK Cat III rating allowing for a whole lot of breasts and not a ton more than that.
In its current version it runs slightly longer than it probably needs to - it's just a shade under two hours - and there are a trio of rape scenes (it is a film about using sex for good and evil, after all) included, two of which will almost certainly be problematic for some.
On the whole a very definite thumbs up. The final bit of massaging should prove to be good for it but, even as is, this is a film that knows exactly what it wants to be and delivers.
First, the film is very well made and played fabulously well to the local crowd who were hooting and laughing from start to finish. And, yes, the laughter was one hundred percent intentional. While the trailers so far have focused on the sex and the action exclusively, Sex And Zen is a very funny movie - one loaded with great sight gags and memorable characters.
Technical aspects are very strong, with the film very well shot with excellent production values and exceptionally good CGI by Hong Kong standards. You can tell where the CG assists are every time but they are not distracting at all and generally used to execute the more eye popping 3D effects that just can't be done in camera.
On the eye popping front, yes, the film earns its title. At least the first part. It's a very sexy film, with a ton of skin, the pacing basically following the old Cinemax late night formula of story scene-sex scene-story scene etc. Probably slightly over half of all spoken dialogue is an 'oooh' or an 'aaah' of some sort. That said, it's not even remotely a hardcore film, the HK Cat III rating allowing for a whole lot of breasts and not a ton more than that.
In its current version it runs slightly longer than it probably needs to - it's just a shade under two hours - and there are a trio of rape scenes (it is a film about using sex for good and evil, after all) included, two of which will almost certainly be problematic for some.
On the whole a very definite thumbs up. The final bit of massaging should prove to be good for it but, even as is, this is a film that knows exactly what it wants to be and delivers.