Welcome to today's Deep Dive. We are really thrilled
to have you joining the conversation today. Yeah,
thanks for tuning in. It's great to have you
here. So if you spend any time reading up on
cinema history, you know that the year 1999 is
universally treated as this. this monolithic,
groundbreaking era for global film. Oh, absolutely.
Right. The industry was just pumping out these
massive culture shifting blockbusters that completely
redefined visual storytelling. Everyone always
talks about 1999. Exactly. But today, we are
steering far away from those towering Hollywood
titans. We are turning our attention to a single,
highly specific source we've pulled for you.
A really fun one, too. It is. It's a Wikipedia
article detailing a 1999 Hong Kong film called
Rave Fever. Yeah, and depending on the market,
you might also know it as X -mas Rave Fever.
Or by its original Chinese title, Zu Mo Kuang
Rave. Right. And this film, it serves as this
incredibly potent artifact from a very specific
cultural flash. point because on paper It presents
as an R rated neon soaked comedy tracking party
goers through the underground club scene of Hong
Kong. And it packs all of that into a relentlessly
brisk 75 minute runtime. It is fast. So fast.
And the initial impression is something highly
ephemeral. You know, the kind of frantic late
night watch that you might normally write off
as just a product of its time. OK, let's unpack
this because our mission today is to discover
how this short, fast paced 90s party comedy actually
operated as a brilliant experimental sandbox.
A huge sandbox. We are going to explore how this
seemingly chaotic little movie served as the
testing ground for the stylistic concepts of
a director who would go on to shape the entire
landscape of Hong Kong cinema. It really is the
ultimate case study and why looking past that
late 90s rave aesthetic reveals so much about
the actual mechanics of filmmaking. It really
does. And the nostalgia factor layered over that
mechanical experimentation makes it even more
compelling for us. Oh for sure. Thinking about
the cultural energy of 1999, you know, that impending
millennium anxiety mixed with the pure hedonism
of the club scene, it provides the perfect backdrop
for this kind of narrative risk taking. Yeah,
the Y2K of it all. Exactly. Filmmakers were operating
on the edge of the digital revolution, but they
were still tethered to the physical analog world.
And that tension is big right into the DNA of
this film. That analog late 90s reality really
is the engine of the entire thing. It is. So
to set the scene for you. the film gets its theatrical
release in Hong Kong on December 23, 1999. Right
before Christmas. Which places it squarely in
the holiday season. It's directed by Alan Mack,
and the casting choice for the lead is just fascinating.
That's a great piece of trivia. The star is a
highly successful canta pop composer named Mark
Lewy. And he not only takes on the lead acting
role, but he naturally produced a massive chunk
of the music that gives the film its aggressive
pulsing club vibe. Which is such a smart move
by the director. Having your lead actor essentially
score his own environment creates this very immersive,
almost symbiotic relationship between the character
and the setting. Yeah, it grounds it. Right.
The music isn't just a soundtrack layered on
top later. It's the atmosphere he's actually
suffocating in. It sets up the plot perfectly.
And the narrative structure here operates a lot
like a relay race. A messy one. Very messy. Except
instead of a controlled track, it's a relay race
of pure overlapping chaos. Race. We start with
Mark Lewis' character, Dawn. And Dawn is this
deeply stressed, harried yuppie trying to navigate
life in Hong Kong. He ends up having a one -night
stand with a mysterious woman named Sonia. But
then... But when Dawn wakes up the next morning,
Sonya has vanished entirely. Goof gone. The only
trace of her existence is the philofax she leaves
behind. And in the context of this film's structure,
that abandoned philofax, it acts as the singular
physical anchor driving the narrative forward.
It's the classic MacGuffin. Exactly. It's the
catalyst that forces all these disparate characters
to collide. Without that dense paper -bound personal
organizer passing from hand to hand, the entire
chaotic network just collapses. It's the baton
being passed through this massive character domino
effect. Yeah. So Don... uses the Filifax to try
and retrace his steps from the night before,
desperately trying to locate Sonya. And this
search immediately drops him into the path of
Nicole, played by Jamie Ong. Right, who is a
very complicated character. Source material paints
Nicole as a sexually liberated, but highly untrustworthy
figure who may or may not have the answers Dawn
is looking for. regarding Sonia. Which introduces
an immediate layer of unreliability to the entire
investigation. From that point on, every interaction
is laced with suspicion. And the web just aggressively
expands from there. The Philafax physically moves
out of Dawn's orbit and ends up in the possession
of a journalist named Ashley, played by Yo -Yo
Mom. Right, passing the baton again. Exactly.
Ashley is dealing with her own separate life
trajectory and ends up falling for this... handsome
but deeply troubled guy named Stephen, played
by Terence Yen, and the Soap opera level of coincidence
here is brilliant because Stephen actually turns
out to be Sonya's ex -lover. It's a phenomenally
tangled web of criss -crossing paths. It's wild.
You have Ashley piecing together these connections
through the filofax and suddenly suspecting actual
foul play regarding Sonya's disappearance. It
gets dark. It does. That suspicion drags the
narrative toward a highly peculiar club patron
named Gordon, played by Sam Lee. Add in an inspector
named Ryan. played by Bay Logan, who gets pulled
into the ensuing mess, and you have this overwhelming
intersecting cast of night owls. It is a lot
of narrative weight to balance in just 75 minutes.
It really is. And, you know, the irony of juggling
that specific character web against the backdrop
of the holiday season shouldn't be overlooked
either. Oh, the Christmas setting. Yeah, we noted
the December 23rd release date earlier. Setting
this gritty, neon -drenched mystery right at
Christmas adds a really sharp thematic contrast.
How so? all these inherent expectations of family,
warmth, predictability, and domestic safety,
right? Yeah, usually. Yet Mac subverts that entirely
by focusing on these isolated, disconnected individuals
wandering through the pulsating transient rave
scene instead. The festive backdrop almost mocks
the messy realities of these characters' lives.
That's a great way to put it. It highlights the
profound loneliness of the urban experience,
while simultaneously emphasizing the bizarre,
serendipitous connections that a bustling metropolis
can force upon you. These people are entirely
untethered from traditional holiday warmth, which
leaves them at the mercy of chance encounters
and a lost organizer. Which brings us to how
Alan Mack actually wrangles all of these chance
encounters. Because the structural execution
is where the real meat of our deep dive lies.
What's fascinating here is how film scholars
have dissected this specific architecture. Yeah
the scholarly take on this is super interesting.
Looking at the source material, David Bordwell
analyzes this exact film in his book Planet Hong
Kong, Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment.
A great book. He categorizes Rave Fever as an
experiment in Gen X network narrative. Network
narrative. Right. He notes the film is fundamentally
structured around tracing crisscrossing love
affairs rather than following a traditional linear
path. Here's where it gets really interesting
because Bordwell actually doubles down on this
analysis in another one of his books, Poetic
of cinema, he draws a direct comparison between
Ray Fever and the 1999 American film Go. Oh,
Go is such a good comparison. For those of you
who track late 90s cinema, you know Go is celebrated
for its frenetic, multi -perspective approach
to storytelling. Yeah, Doug Lyman directed that
one. Exactly. Boardwell argues that both films
utilize this distinct network approach to construct
their realities. And breaking down the mechanics
of that network approach reveals why it's such
an ambitious choice for a relatively green director
like Mack was at the time. Break that down for
us a bit. Sure. Standard narratives hold your
hand and walk you alongside a single protagonist
from the inciting incident all the way to the
resolution. Point A to point B. Right. The network
narrative shatters that linearity. It forces
the audience to revisit the exact same sequence
of events, but viewed through the entirely different
lenses of competing characters. It also elevates
characters who would traditionally be completely
disposable. Yes. Like someone who acts as a simple
background extra in Don's storyline suddenly
becomes the focal point of the next sequence,
and you get to see their entire internal motivation.
The complexity of managing that is staggering.
And in this case, the circulating filofax acts
as the only connective tissue keeping those pargy
animals tethered to the same plot. It's the glue.
It demands a highly sophisticated approach to
editing, which ties directly into a point raised
by author Gina Marchetti in The Sources. What
did she say? She observes that Mack experimented
with elliptical narratives reminiscent of Hong
Kong New Wave films. You hear the term elliptical
narratives thrown around a lot when discussing
the Hong Kong New Wave, and seeing it applied
to a raucous 90s club quality is a fascinating
stylistic collision. It really is. And for those
who might not be familiar with the term, an elliptical
narrative is basically the intentional omission
of connective tissue. Right. Elliptical editing
skips through time or removes seemingly vital
plot developments. It drops the viewer directly
into the consequences of an action rather than
showing the action itself. So it forces you to
lean in. Exactly. You are actively forced to
fill in the blanks using context clues from the
intersecting storylines. It's an approach that
entirely refuses to spoon feed the viewer. You
are doing the detective work alongside Ashley
and Inspector Ryan piecing together a puzzle
where every character holds one fragmented piece
of the truth. And trying to cram an elliptical
multi -perspective network narrative into a 75
minute runtime requires an incredible amount
of precision. It does and this brings up a really
compelling tension regarding the film. the expectation
versus the reality. Oh, the marketing versus
the actual movie? Yeah. When you market an R
-rated movie called Ray Fever set in the underground
club scene, audiences are going to walk in with
very specific assumptions. They are primed for
superficial thrills, heavy bass lines, and visual
excess. And looking at the critical consensus
from the sources, you can see how reviewers grappled
with what the film was actually trying to do.
There was definitely a split. Take the review
from Love8Film .com. they totally leaned into
the aesthetic surface level. They echoed Bordwell's
comparison to the movie Go, but they ultimately
summarized Rave Fever as a candy -coated confection
set against a sexy neon -lit backdrop. Which
is an interesting way to phrase it because that
framing implies a triumph of style over substance.
Why, like it's just a music video. Yeah, a film
designed primarily as a visual and auditory trip
rather than a complex narrative exercise. But
the flip side of that is the Deeply insightful
review from the website Brands .com, which awarded
the film a 7 .5 out of 10. They had a very different
take. They fiercely pushed back against that
sexy neon lit expectation. The review explicitly
states that despite the aggressive marketing
of the title, the film is absolutely not a sexy,
highly charged exploration of the HK raves scene.
Not at all. They categorize it instead as a fairly
subdued, but very amusing comedy. The Bronze
.com review makes a brilliant structural observation
to back up that claim too. They describe the
entire central mystery. You know, the disappearance
of Sonia, the bloody trail left by the Filafax,
the suspicions of foul play as a shaggy dog story.
A shaggy dog story applied to a gritty urban
thriller is such a wild subversion of genre tropes.
It is the ultimate bait and switch. Explain the
shaggy dog concept for us. Sure. In literary
and narrative terms, a shaggy dog story is a
long, highly convoluted yarn that meticulously
builds toward a massive climax or profound revelation.
Only to just fizzle out. Exactly. Only to resolve
in an entirely pointless or absurd anticlimax.
The joke is essentially on the audience for taking
the destination so seriously. The mystery is
just a veneer. Entirely. The review highlights
that the disappearance of Sonya isn't the point
of the movie. It's merely the excuse Mac uses
to string together these clever, genuinely funny,
and wonderfully absurd comedic interactions between
his crisscrossing characters. So the journey
itself is the point. The journey and the structural
experimentation of that journey is the actual
punchline. Understanding that it's a quirky character
comedy disguised as a neon thriller makes the
overall critical resection make a lot more sense.
It really recontextualizes it. The Wikipedia
article notes that on the cult cinema website,
cityonfire .com, three separate reviewers gave
it remarkably strong scores, an 8 .5, a 7, and
an 8 out of 10. That's pretty high for that site.
You don't pull that kind of positive consensus
from niche genre critics unless the structural
humor is genuinely landing. Those scores indicate
a deep appreciation for the underlying craftsmanship.
It proves the audience was willing to engage
with the elliptical narrative and the network
approach, recognizing that Mac was doing something
far more ambitious than a standard party movie.
Let's pivot to the commercial realities and the
broader legacy of this sandbox experiment. OK,
let's do it. At the local Hong Kong box office,
Rave Fever pulled in roughly 1 .8 million Hong
Kong dollars. Not bad at all. And it also managed
to secure a footprint beyond its domestic release.
being presented in competition at the 2000 Stockholm
Film Festival. If we connect this to the bigger
picture, the financial return and the festival
run are solid achievements, sure. But the true
historical value of Rave Fever lies entirely
in its role within Alan Mack's career trajectory.
This is the best part. Reviewing the filmography
provided in our sources, this was only his second
directorial effort. He debuted in 1998 with a
film called Nude Fear. So he is operating at
the very beginning of his creative evolution
here. He's a rookie. He's using the project as
a laboratory. That concept of the sandbox is
crucial for understanding how legendary directors
build their technical foundations. A 75 -minute
R -rated comedy offers a relatively low -stakes
environment. Room to fail. Exactly. Mack leveraged
that environment to rigorously test his ability
to handle highly complex, multi -perspective
storytelling. He was actively working out the
mathematical precision required to juggle competing
viewpoints, elliptical edits, and a sprawling
ensemble cast all without entirely losing the
audience's comprehension. You have to master
juggling three objects before you can juggle
flaming swords. And he absolutely needed those
technical skills refined because the trajectory
of his career was about to launch into the stratosphere.
It really was. Just a couple of years later,
Alan Mack would go on to co -direct the globally
celebrated Infernal Affairs trilogy starting
in 2002. For those of you familiar with international
cinema, the Infernal Affairs trilogy is a masterclass
intention. The movie that departed was actually
a remake of it. Right. It's an incredibly dense,
intricately woven thriller about undercover moles
infiltrating opposing sides of the law. And the
brilliance of Infernal Affairs relies entirely
on the flawless execution of a crisscrossing,
multi -perspective narrative. Just like Ray Fever.
Exactly. It demands an audience capable of tracking
secrets that the characters themselves are unaware
of, utilizing the exact same elliptical storytelling
techniques to build unbearable tension. That's
wild. The structural DNA of that massive, career
-defining crime epic was forged right here, tracking
a lost personal organizer through a nightclub
comedy. It completely reframes how we should
look at the early filmographies of major auteurs.
Mack takes the technical foundation he built
in the sandbox and goes on to direct massive
hits like Initial D and the Overheard series.
The sprawling scope of those later films owes
a massive debt to the risks he took with Rave
Fever. So what does this all mean for you, the
listener? Why dedicate time to dissecting an
obscure 75 -minute Hong Kong comedy from 1999?
It's a fair question. The takeaway is that Rave
Fever stands as a fascinating, tangible record
of structural evolution. It serves as a reminder
that whenever you sit down to enjoy a flawlessly
executed, multi -layered thriller today, you
are likely benefiting from the weird, low -budget,
neon -lit experiments a creator was brave enough
to attempt years earlier. Masterpieces don't
just happen. Right. They're born from the trial
and error of the sandbox. And, you know, the
evolution of those narratives also forces us
to consider the evolution of the world they take
place in. Oh, that's an interesting point. Looking
at the core mechanics of this plot raises an
unavoidable question about modern storytelling.
The entirety of Ray Fever hinges on a physical
analog object. The filofax being lost, discovered,
and passed indiscriminately from stranger to
stranger. Which would never happen today. In
our current reality, heavily dominated by smartphones,
instantaneous messaging, cloud synchronization,
and GPS tracking, the concept of losing your
entire schedule and contact list in a physical
form is nearly extinct. You would just lock your
phone remotely. Right! A stranger cannot simply
pick up a drop piece of your life and flip through
the pages. Our lives are locked behind biometric
security and passcodes. Face ID ruins the plot.
It totally does. How does the eradication of
these physical analog objects fundamentally alter
the way writers can even construct serendipitous
mysteries and crisscrossing romances today? We
have gained in a measurable amount of digital
convenience, but we may have lost the physical
catalyst required for these kinds of chaotic,
unpredictable human adventures. That is a brilliant
final thought to leave you with. The modern digital
landscape would have resolved the central mystery
of this film in about 30 seconds. The movie would
have been five minutes long. Exactly. Thank you
so much for joining us on this Deep Dive. We
hope you walk away with a renewed appreciation
for the mechanics of 9D cinema, the art of the
network narrative, and perhaps a bit of nostalgia
for the chaotic potential of a lost paper diary.
Keep exploring those obscure corners of history.
And we will catch you next time.