I went into my viewing of Young Lovers (1979) with very low expectations but -- and here's the thing -- even a bad Shaw Brothers film from this era will usually provide some pleasure. In this case, it's a lot of location shots of Hong Kong circa 1978 and 1979.Okay, so Derek Yee plays poor college student Junming who is love with rich girl Lamjin (Candice Yu). Her parents -- Goo Man Chung playing a modern character for a change and the ubiquitous Ouyang Sha-Fei -- disapprove. Junming's brother is involved in a murder case and the drama ratchets up from there.
To help support his family, Junming gets a job at the Holiday Inn (in Tsim Sha Tsui?) and meets the lovely Yili (Lam Yi-Wa) while busing tables. She's "a rich man's toy" (to quote a Luke Haines song) and now Derek is in love with two different rich girls.
Anyway, the film takes a decidedly weird turn with a slow-motion wet T-shirt scene involving the girl -- the result of Junming's turning the garden hose on her. Is Young Lovers a sex comedy or a distaff Romeo and Juliet like the DVD case promised?
So, because of the crime his brother is associated with -- a crime that gives the producers an excuse for a brothel scene with some surprising full frontal nudity for a HK film -- Junming has to flee to his relatives' house on Lantau Island and Candice Yu comes along.
There's more class drama, doomed romance, and copious nudity from Lam Yi-Wa.
Really, it's hard to recommend Young Lovers for anything beyond the nudity and views of Hong Kong streets circa 1979.
This was a fairly early release in the Shaw Brothers reissue series and, unsurprisingly, it's not anamorphic widescreen. However, it is a bit surprising that a 1979 film is not presented with a Cantonese language track as surely this was shown in Cantonese in Hong Kong when originally released, right?
You can order Young Lovers on DVD here.