Curiosity Kills the Cat (Hao qi hai shi mao) Review

What appears to be a simple 'wronged mistress exacts vengeance' thriller morphs into something richer and more complex in Zhang Yibai's Curiosity Kills the Cat.

The director previously made the soaring, warm, and criminally unseen drama Spring Subway, which detailed the marriage of a young couple starting to lose their passion for one another. With Curiosity, he shows what happens when the passion has long since been extinguished.

To get there, though, the film takes a circuitous route, first following the exploits of the very curious MoMo (Lin Yuan). She works in a photo shop on the ground floor of a luxury residential tower, and loves to snap away with her cell phone camera.

Among the residents, she encounters Rose (Carina Lau), married to John (Hu Jun), and their young son Bai (Ma Qianli). She also meets security guard Liu Fendou (Liao Fan) and newly-arrived beauty shop owner Sharon Liang (Song Jia). With the players set, it remains for MoMo to become an eyewitness to a series of events involving Rose, John, and Sharon that apparently leads to one conclusion.

Just as the thudding Fatal Attraction-like plot mechanics grind into action, the picture shifts gears to reveal the delicate details of an affair, altering perceptions and pointing to an entirely different conclusion. And then wham!, the rug is pulled out, a false sense of complacency is demolished, and nothing can be taken for granted.

If all the filmmakers had in mind was the desire to create a clever puzzle picture, Curiosity Killed the Cat might still be a darkly entertaining mystery thriller, but with each twist, the characters come more clearly into focus. Finally an awful realization hits -- the characters (save one) feel hollow in some way, missing essential elements that would make them complete. Their desperate yearning leads them to take drastic actions and ultimately pushes the film toward a messy, noir-ish resolution.

By slowing the pace, director Zhang keeps the film from becoming the breathless thriller it might have become in other hands. Instead, the dramatics are allowed to play out more naturally, giving room for the characters to display their own personalities.

An excellent example of this is an early scene in which Momo and the security guard share a ride in the back of a truck and she shares a "lead". After MoMo is dropped off, the security guard follows the lead by tracing a photo sent to his cell pone, not realizing that MoMo is the source. MoMo skips delightedly away as her cell phone rings and the security guard passes by her, unknowing, on a highway in the background. (It plays much more gracefully and effectively than this clumsy description might lead you to believe.)

So, despite my dropping the term a couple of times, please don't expect a suspenseful thriller. Curiosity Killed the Cat is a thoughtful, somewhat mournful drama that still generates a fair degree of tension based on the imperfections of a handful of people too caught up in their own emotions to realize what damage they are causing.

The Zoke Culture DVD (All-Region, PAL) is not terribly impressive. Opening credits are cut off slightly at the sides, so I'm not certain that the picture is presented in the correct aspect ratio. The picture quality itself is a bit dark and muddy to my eyes, but that could have been the intention of the filmmakers and/or the result of budget limitations.

Two audio tracks are provided (Mandarin and Cantonese) along with removable subtitles (English and, according to YesAsia, simplified Chinese). The trailer for Johnny To's Exiled auto-plays after you insert the disk.

Clicking on 'Features' brings up a menu with two options. When I clicked the first option, a screen with a few images and Chinese characters appeared. Clicking the second option brings up footage with Chinese titles; the footage appears to be from another movie -- perhaps a trailer of some kind? -- but I don't know for sure.

Even with these reservations, this inexpensive disk is evidently the only DVD option right now -- if anyone knows different, please advise -- and is recommended for the quality of the movie.

Note: International sales rights are evidently held by sales agent Golden Network Asia Limited.