Beginning Friday, March 22, a new 2K restoration of My Heart Is That Eternal Rose, Patrick Tam's underseen and visually daring late-80s action-romance, opens for a one-week NY exclusive theatrical run at Metrograph In Theater.
Tam, perhaps the Hong Kong New Wave's most daring cine-modernist and a crucial influence on Wong Kar-wai, teams with DP Christopher Doyle, a regular Wong collaborator, for a high-style “heroic bloodshed” melodrama starring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Kenny Bee, and Joey Wong as three friends bound together by ties both criminal and romantic. With shamelessly pulpy plotting, a synth-heavy score, luxuriously expressionistic imagery, and a climactic bloodbath for the ages, My Heart is That Eternal Rose exists somewhere at the intersection between Wong's cinema of longing and John Woo's cinema of wrathful vengeance. One of the unheralded masterworks of Hong Kong filmmaking. A Kani Releasing release.
The digitization and restoration of My Heart is that Eternal Rose was entirely commissioned by Steve Law's team of IST Hong Kong (a member of Mei Ah Entertainment Group). This film was scanned from 35mm color negative on ARRI 4K and graded in Blackmagic Resolve. The film restoration was remastered primarily in Phoenix and Diamant, and is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio.
