The concept of the art-house erotic film is quite new, in Asian cinema at least, as in the moment there are very few entries in the category, if one could even call it that. Titles like “It Feels so Good” by Haruhiko Arai and “White River” by Ma Xue are the first that come to mind, with “In the Morning of La Petite Mort” also moving towards the same, quite unusual direction.
Ching is a beautiful young prostitute who lives in a stylish apartment where she “services” mostly elderly men, essentially just for the money since she seems not to enjoy herself at all. Matsui is a homeless food delivery driver, who spends his days from destination to destination to deliver goods and his nights to find a place to stay. Eventually, he settles in an abandoned apartment where he sleeps on the floor, until Helen, a middle-aged Filipino cleaner, takes a liking to him, and secretly, brings him what small accommodations she can to make his life even a bit more comfortable. At about that time, Matsui meets Ching, and the two eventually have sex, which she, for the first time in the film, seems to enjoy, while he finds a way out for his grief and his need for (sexual) connection. As he has no money, Ching agrees to 15 free deliveries from him, which is essentially what brings him to her apartment repeatedly, to the point that they even go out on a date one night. Eventually, though, the girl disappears and the boy embarks on a series of other jobs, dealing with pigs and chickens. In the meantime, Helen was to endure the “woes” of Wang, the security guard inside her apartment complex.
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Wang Yu-lin's film is as bleak as they can get, with the greyish tones and the overall lack of lighting that characterizes Wang Pan-yung's cinematography adding to the overall situation of the characters, who seem to inhabit a setting that moves somewhere between the shantytown and the dystopia. That three of the characters seem to be rather poor, and the only one who has a bit of money is Ching, who has to sell her body to achieve that though, adds to the overall pessimism. The same applies to the sentiments each person feels in this erotic chain, as Wang wants Helen who turns him down, Helen wants Matsui who turns her down, and he wants Ching, who eventually abandons him and disappears. That their connection seems to be focused on sex but is also evident that is about something much more than that, a solace from their lives and their overall griefs, cements this approach, but is also one of the smartest elements in Wang Yu-lin's direction.
Small notions of optimism do appear here and there, as the sexual needs of all characters are eventually met, one way or the other, but even then, Wang does not allow the viewer to relax, as violence and tragedy become parts of an already dark narrative. At the same time though, and even through the aforementioned events, the movie ends with some kind of romanticized optimism, which does close the whole thing in satisfying fashion.
The approach towards editing is also interesting here, with Wang, Gia Hua Gin and Carlo Francisco Manatad's works resulting a pace that is fittingly slow, induced, however, with a sense of speed and movement through the plethora of cuts from one protagonist to the other. Wang Pan-yung captures the many sex scenes quite closely, in a way though, that more intensifies the drama than actually titillate, while some of the later ones can also be perceived as quite funny.
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The characters do not say a lot, in an approach that is also fitting with the overall aesthetics here. Yusuke Fukuchi as Matsui is quite convincing in his pessimism and despair, with the same applying to Wang Yun-chih as Ching, in her disillusionment and essentially given-up attitude, which does change, though, after a point. Jan Huei-Ling as Helen and King Jieh-Wen as Wang move between the drama and the comedy with gusto, rounding up an overall competent effort in the acting department.
As an erotic, art-house drama, the focus of “In the Morning of La Petite Mort” is definitely on the last two terms. At the same time, though, it is the erotic that allows the film to stand out among so many movies of the other two categories, and also the element that makes it definitely deserve a watch.
